Biography

Ben Greenman is a PhD student studying programming languages at Northeastern University’s College of Computer and Information Science. His goal is to help developers incrementally add guarantees to their programs, and he seeks to work in research and teaching after he graduates.

Education

• MEng, Cornell University
• BS, Cornell University

About Me

• Hometown: Delmar, New York
• Field of Study: Programming Languages
• PhD Advisor: Matthias Felleisen

What are the specifics of your graduate education (thus far)?

Measuring and improving the performance of gradual type systems, specifically Typed Racket and Reticulated Python.

What are your research interests?

Language design, strong guarantees, and practical guarantees; i.e., the gap between programs that are useful and programs that are predictably correct and performance.

What’s one problem you’d like to solve with your research/work?

Approximating type inference in a language without principal types.

What aspect of what you do is most interesting?

The best thing is building tools for working programmers.

What are your research or career goals, going forward?

Test promising ideas, share findings at conferences, try again with new energy. In the short-term I hope to graduate; in the long-term, continue researching, teaching, and writing.

Where did you study for your undergraduate degree?

I earned my Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees from Cornell University. But I specifically chose Northeastern because of Professor Matthias Felleisen and Professor Amal Ahmed. It was a great choice.