Scherlis has led the Fluid Project for more than a decade, which has focused on techniques and practices for scalable software assurance, leading to a family of tools for "analysis-based verification," based primarily on sound and dynamic analysis. An application emphasis is on developing prototype tools to assure safe concurrency that can ultimately be usable by working professional developers. Some of the technologies are commercialized through a Carnegie Mellon spinoff and these versions have been applied to larger-scale systems, including Hadoop, Java system libraries including java.util.Concurrency, diverse proprietary systems such as app servers and simulation engines.
Scherlis was principal investigator for the Carnegie Mellon / NASA High Dependability Computing Project (HDCP), in which CMU led a collaboration with five universities (MIT, USC, U Wash, U Md, U Wisc) to help NASA address long-term software dependability challenges.
Scherlis is involved in a number of activities related to technology and policy, including testifying before Congress on innovation and information technology, and, previously, on roles for a Federal CIO. He interrupted his career at CMU to serve at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for six years, departing in 1993 as a senior executive. While at DARPA he had responsibilities relating to research and strategy in software technology, computer security, the initiation of the high performance computing and communications (HPCC) program (now NITRD), information infrastructure, and other topics.
Scherlis chaired the National Research Council (NRC) study committee on defense software producibility, which recently released its final report Critical Code: Software Producibility for Defense. He served multiple terms as a member of the DARPA Information Science and Technology Study Group (ISAT). He recently completed chairing a NRC study on information technology, innovation, and e-government. He has led or participated in other national studies related to cybersecurity, crisis response, analyst information management, Ada, and health care informatics infrastructure. He has been an advisor to major IT companies and is a founder of SureLogic and Panopto. He has served as program chair for a number of technical conferences, including the ACM Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) Symposium. He has more than 80 scientific publications. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a lifetime National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.