Events Calendar

CS Colloquium: Arjun Guha (University of Massachusetts Amherst) - New Abstractions for New Programming Platforms

Speaker: Arjun Guha, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Talk Title: New Abstractions for New Programming Platforms

Series: CS Colloquium

Abstract: Programmers today have to wrestle with a wide variety of programming platforms. However, traditional programming abstractions and tools were designed for an earlier era, and are often ineffective today, e.g., when building scalable cloud services, reliable robot controllers, and robust web applications. To address these kinds of challenges, we need to rethink the abstractions and tools that programmers employ.

In this talk, we first discuss problems that arise in "serverless computing", which is a new approach to cloud computing. We carefully define an operational semantics for serverless computing, which we then use to 1) formulate correctness criteria, 2) design new modularity mechanisms, and 3) develop a serverless computing accelerator that uses language-based sandboxing and speculative optimizations.

Next, we present fundamental limitations of the web programming model, which affect the design of JavaScript, and make it hard to build robust programming tools that run in web browsers. We address this problem by extending JavaScript with first-class continuations, and efficiently compile the extended language to run in unmodified web browsers.

Finally, we present challenges that arise when debugging robot controllers, and why traditional debugging tools do not help. We present an interactive program repair tool, which uses a MAX-SMT solver to search for corrections to a robot state machine, given a small number of human-provided inputs.

This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium



Biography: Arjun Guha is an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Using the tools and techniques of programming languages, his research addresses security, reliability, and performance problems in web applications, systems, networking, and robotics. His work has received an ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential Paper Award, an ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award, an ACM SIGPLAN Research Highlight, and a Google Faculty Research Award.


Host: Ramesh Govindan

Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Assistant to CS chair