Leadership in the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science & Engineering learned today about the details of research being conducted by one of its faculty members and graduate students into the security of the Linux Kernel.
The short-sighted approach to mastering a topic is to dedicate all of your time and energy to study in depth what has been written about it so far.
The long-sighted approach is to study a range of interconnected fields, and form your own mental models through relevant analogies.