KU Leuven

PhD Position in Programming Languages

2024-10-10 (Europe/Brussels)
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About the employer

KU Leuven is an autonomous university. It was founded in 1425. It was born of and has grown within the Catholic tradition.

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You will join the team of prof. Tom Schrijvers, which has a proven track record in programming language research, covering a range of different topics together with many international partners: functional programming, Haskell, domain-specific languages, type systems, programming language meta-theory, computational effects (monads, algebraic effects), equational reasoning and program calculation, etc. The team of prof. Schrijvers is part of the Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence section of the KU Leuven Department of Computer Science.

Project

Developer productivity and software performance are two key properties of software development that are hard to achieve simultaneously. The former requires rich layers of abstraction and highly reusable, context independent code. In contrast, the latter aims at code without generic overhead or indirections that is highly specialized. General-purpose optimized compilation can automatically improve the performance of high-level programs, but is still far from optimal. Much more promising are code generation techniques that can be employed in "active libraries" to offer high-level programming interfaces, and exploit knowledge of the problem domain and of the code structure to generated highly tuned code. Standard code-generation techniques (e.g., templates in C++) can be quite error-prone and hard to debug. Multi-stage programming promises to considerably lower the threshold by providing strong static guarantees with respect to well-scopedness and well-typedness at the level of the generators. This project aims to advance the state-of-the-art of multi-stage programming. In particular, we aim to develop the interaction between staging and computational effects. While most existing effort has targeted effect-free code, side-effects are essential for functionality and/or performance in most applications. We take a foundational approach, developing a formal calculus for multi-staging with support for algebraic effects and handlers, complemented by practical case studies.

Profile

  • You are currently or in the near future the holder of a master degree in computer science or similar. 
  • You have an excellent academic track record. 
  • You have a demonstrated interest in programming languages and programming language theory. 
  • Ideally you are knowledgable in several of the following areas: functional programming, Haskell, calculi/type systems/operational semantics, category theory,  proof assistants/mechanisation. 
  • You like to combine theoretical work and practical programming.
  • You have a good spoken and written command of the English language.
Do include evidence of the above in your application file.

Offer

We offer:

  • A PhD scholarship with a competitive monthly stipend. The contract is renewable yearly for up to 4 years.
  • An exciting interdisciplinary research environment at KU Leuven, Europe s most innovative university;
  • The possibility to attend international summer schools, participate in international conferences and collaborate with our international partners.

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. ir. Tom Schrijvers, tel.: +32 16 32 78 30, mail: tom.schrijvers@kuleuven.be.

KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.

Job details

Title
PhD Position in Programming Languages
Employer
Location
Oude Markt 13 Leuven, Belgium
Published
2024-09-10
Application deadline
2024-10-10 23:59 (Europe/Brussels)
2024-10-10 23:59 (CET)
Job type
PhD
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About the employer

KU Leuven is an autonomous university. It was founded in 1425. It was born of and has grown within the Catholic tradition.

Visit the employer page