justin-site/content/about.md

4.2 KiB

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University.

I am always looking for good students!

Previously, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, and a postdoc at the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, and in the Programming Principles, Logic, and Verification Group at the University College London. I was a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

I am funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and Facebook Research.

Research Interests

I design methods to formally verify that programs are correct, especially programs that use randomization. Such programs can be easy to show correct on paper, but surprisingly challenging for computers to analyze. Accordingly, my research blends ideas from two classical areas of computer science: randomized algorithms from theoretical computer science (TCS) and formal verification.

Drawing inspiration from how humans reason about randomized algorithms, we can build simpler and more automated verification techniques. In the past, I've applied this approach to properties like accuracy, incentive compatibility, Markov chain mixing, and various notions of algorithmic stability.

A particular focus of my work has been differential privacy, a rigorous definition of privacy that is currently under extensive study. I have investigated a variety of formal methods---such as type systems and program logics---to verify that programs are differentially private.

From a more traditional algorithms perspective, I am also interested in applying differential privacy to optimization, machine learning, and mechanism design.

Teaching

  • Data Structures and Functional Programming (CS 3110): F23 S23 S22
  • Category Theory for Computer Scientists (CS 6117): F22
  • Foundations of Probabilistic Programming (CS 6182): F21
  • Reasoning about Probabilistic Programs
    Invited Course at OPLSS 2021: [slides] [recordings]
  • Security and Privacy in Data Science (CS 763): F20 F19
  • Introduction to the Theory and Design of PL (CS 538): S20 S19
  • Topics in Security and Privacy Technologies (CS 839): F18

Service

  • 2024 OOPSLA, CSF, CCS, MFPS
  • 2023 CSF, ICALP-B, LICS, OOPSLA, MFPS
  • 2022 POPL, PLDI, MFPS (co-chair)
  • 2021 ESOP, PLMW@POPL, CSF, AAAI, COLT, WoLLIC, MFPS
  • 2020 AAAI, CSF, LAFI, WoLLIC, PLMW@POPL, OOPSLA (ERC)
  • 2019 POPL, PLMW@POPL, POST, CSF, DARS (co-chair)
  • 2018 LICS, WWW
  • 2017 FCS, TPDP, MFPS
  • 2016 PLDI (ERC)

Blogging

I've greatly enjoyed blogging for PL Perspectives!