I am interested in various issues in functional programming language design, module systems, type inference, the applications of advanced type systems, and compilers.
[Publications]My dissertation proposal [pdf] develops some of the interesting issues in program modularity. I am developing the formal semantics for a particularly powerful form of modules which is both fully transparent (i.e., propagates all type information and type actions) and higher-order (i.e., functors which map modules to modules can also map functors/modules to functors/modules). This powerful form of modules enables greater code reuse without compromising strong static type safety. I have also been exploring various implications of extending parallelism and exception safety (type and effect systems) to the program module level.
Language support for modularity is a common theme in any nontrivial language used to construct large software systems. Typed languages, in particular, present interesting design problems. Central to module system design is the imperative to enable separate compilation of large software systems and specification of interfaces to separately compilable compilation units. The richer and more powerful a core language is, the more complicated interface specification of separately compilable modules becomes. The interplay and tension between separate compilation and the simplicity of interface specifications provide a rich design space. The need for modularity is not restricted to general purpose programming languages. For example, theorem proving and model checking languages also employ module systems to improve organizational flexibility and performance by spreading out code to multiple modules and thereby limiting the size of any individual module. Popular extensions of SML such as SML/NJ and MLton support a particularly powerful module system that is higher-order and yet admits full transparency of type components that result from higher-order functor (i.e., a function from module to module) application.
Currently, I am working with Dave MacQueen on the SML/NJ module system and compiler. The goal is to eliminate FLINT dependencies in the front-end. Once complete, users will be able to integrate the SML/NJ elaborator with alternative optimizer, code generators, and programming tools.
Previously, I have studied methods and semantics for teaching type inference using only rewriting with Dave MacQueen and Robby Findler. While I was at Harvey Mudd, I implemented Jun Yang's UAE (Unification of Assumption Environments) type inference algorithm for the entire Core ML with Chris Stone and various others.
At the University of Chicago and TTI-C, we have an assortment of programming languages oriented activities such as PL Lunch (at TTI-C) and the HYPER (at UChicago).
This past summer (2009) I taught the Introduction to Computer Science course (CMSC15100) at the University of Chicago. The course utilized the How to Design Programs curriculum, the Scheme language, and various custom shims for importing data from Facebook and Twitter that I implemented. In the final lab, students wrote to the Twitter API.
I have TA'ed Software Construction, Foundations of Software, Programming Languages, Networks and Distributed Systems, and the summer course Concepts of Programming.
I am a graduate student who is studying at the wonderful Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago. My Bachelor of Science is from Harvey Mudd College. I have had the excellent opportunity to work at a few tech startups while I was student.