Programming Languages

Research in Programming Languages and Systems at Imperial spans foundational issues in language semantics right through to the design and implementation of new languages, including compilers and domain-specific techniques to achieve performance, parallelism and correctness.

Key areas include: programming language semantics and type systems, including type systems for concurrent, distributed and parallel computing, and semantics for web programming languages; new programming models and domain-specific languages for emerging application areas; domain-specific code generation and optimization; runtime systems and operating system support for concurrency, parallelism and energy efficiency; program analysis techniques for improving the reliability and security of software at various levels of abstraction, from systems software through to web applications; techniques and tools for rigorous testing of programming language implementations; and techniques and tools for reasoning about concurrency and parallelism in modern programming languages.

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Research groups and centres

Groups

Centres

Academics

Academics

  • Dr Cristian Cadar

    Dr Cristian Cadar

    Personal details

    Dr Cristian Cadar Reader in Software Reliability

    +44 (0)20 7594 8244

    Research interests

    Software Engineering, Computer Systems and Software Security, with a focus on building practical techniques for improving the reliability and security of software systems.

    Location

    435, Huxley Building

  • Dr Alastair Donaldson

    Dr Alastair Donaldson

    Personal details

    Dr Alastair Donaldson Reader

    +44 (0)20 7594 8266

    Research interests

    Formal verification techniques for multicore software. Software performance optimization for multicore processors.

    Location

    422, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Sophia Drossopoulou

    Prof. Sophia Drossopoulou

    Personal details

    Prof. Sophia Drossopoulou Professor of Programming Languages

    +44 (0)20 7594 8368

    Research interests

    Object Capability Policies, Concurrent Programming, Program Verification, Characterization of Program Evolution and Theorem Proving.

    Location

    559, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Susan Eisenbach

    Prof. Susan Eisenbach

    Personal details

    Prof. Susan Eisenbach Professor in Computing

    +44 (0)20 7594 8264

    Research interests

    Programming Languages, Concurrency and Testing.

    Location

    569, Huxley Building

  • Dr Tony Field

    Dr Tony Field

    Personal details

    Dr Tony Field Reader in Performance Engineering

    +44 (0)20 7594 8364

    Research interests

    Engineering for High-Performance, Virtual-time program execution (VTE), Functional programming, Individual-based models (IbMs).

    Location

    354, Huxley Building

  • Dr Antonio Filieri

    Dr Antonio Filieri

    Personal details

    Dr Antonio Filieri Lecturer

    +44 (0)20 7594 9478

    Research interests

    Exact and approximate methods for probabilistic software analysis and probabilistic programming, Control Theory for Software Engineering, and Runtime-efficient and incremental verification of quantitative and functional software properties.

    Location

    421, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Philippa Gardner

    Prof. Philippa Gardner

    Personal details

    Prof. Philippa Gardner Professor of Theoretical Computer Science

    +44 (0)20 7594 8292

    Research interests

    JavaScript, Concurrency and Resource Reasoning.

    Location

    453, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Chris Hankin

    Prof. Chris Hankin

    Personal details

    Prof. Chris Hankin Director, Institute for Security Science & Technology

    +44 (0)20 7594 7619

    Research interests

    Security, Program Analysis and  Programming Language Theory.

    Location

    Sherfield Building

  • Prof. Paul Kelly

    Prof. Paul Kelly

    Personal details

    Prof. Paul Kelly Professor of Software Technology

    +44 (0)20 7594 8332

    Research interests

    Languages, compilers, operating systems for parallel computing. Domain-specific tools and active libraries. Computer systems issues underlying performance. Software tools for portable parallel programming. Irregular and data-intensive applications. Applying a broad range of mathematical and theoretical ideas to compute...

    Location

    L3 (upstairs), William Penney Building
    304, Huxley Building

  • Dr Ben Livshits

    Dr Ben Livshits

    Personal details

    Dr Ben Livshits Reader

    Research interests

    Security, Privacy, Program Analysis, Compilers, Software Engineering and Crowdsourcing.

    Location

    569, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Wayne Luk

    Prof. Wayne Luk

    Personal details

    Prof. Wayne Luk Professor of Computer Engineering

    +44 (0)20 7594 8313

    Research interests

    Hardware and Architecture, Reconfigurable Computing, Design Automation.

    Location

    434, Huxley Building

  • Dr Sergio Maffeis

    Dr Sergio Maffeis

    Personal details

    Dr Sergio Maffeis Senior Lecturer

    +44 (0)20 7594 8390

    Research interests

    Computer Security, Web Programming and Process Calculi.

    Location

    441, Huxley Building

  • Dr Herbert Wiklicky

    Dr Herbert Wiklicky

    Personal details

    Dr Herbert Wiklicky Reader in Computer Science

    +44 (0)20 7594 8206

    Research interests

    Program Analysis, semantics of programming languages, Probabilistic Models, Program Synthesis, semantics in Computer Security and Quantum Computation.

    Location

    424, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Nobuko Yoshida

    Prof. Nobuko Yoshida

    Personal details

    Prof. Nobuko Yoshida Professor of Computing

    +44 (0)20 7594 8240

    Research interests

    Theoretical Computer Science.

    Location

    556, Huxley Building