News 2021

Programming Languages & Verification

Max Planck researchers publish 11 papers at POPL 2022!

Researchers from MPI-SWS have authored a total of 11 papers accepted to POPL 2022 (just under 17% of all accepted papers).  This is the fifth year in a row that MPI-SWS researchers have published 5+ papers in POPL.  Furthermore, two Max Planck papers were awarded a 2022 POPL Distinguished Paper Award. Congratulations to all our POPL authors!
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Researchers from MPI-SWS have authored a total of 11 papers accepted to POPL 2022 (just under 17% of all accepted papers).  This is the fifth year in a row that MPI-SWS researchers have published 5+ papers in POPL.  Furthermore, two Max Planck papers were awarded a 2022 POPL Distinguished Paper Award. Congratulations to all our POPL authors!
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Sumit Gulwani awarded 2021 Max Planck Humboldt Medal

September 2021
Sumit Gulwani, a scientist at Microsoft Research in Redmond, is one of two recipients of the 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt Medal. He will collaborate with MPI-SWS faculty Rupak Majumdar and Adish Singla on the problem of AI in Education.

With a background in program analysis and artificial intelligence, Sumit Gulwani shaped the field of program synthesis, which emerged around 2010. The computer scientist developed algorithms that can efficiently generate computer programs from very few input-output examples, ...
Sumit Gulwani, a scientist at Microsoft Research in Redmond, is one of two recipients of the 2021 Max Planck-Humboldt Medal. He will collaborate with MPI-SWS faculty Rupak Majumdar and Adish Singla on the problem of AI in Education.

With a background in program analysis and artificial intelligence, Sumit Gulwani shaped the field of program synthesis, which emerged around 2010. The computer scientist developed algorithms that can efficiently generate computer programs from very few input-output examples, natural-language-based specification, or from just the code and data context. His work made it possible for non-programmers to program tedious, repetitive spreadsheet tasks, and enabled productivity improvements for data scientists and developers for data wrangling and software engineering tasks. Recently, Sumit has also been using the tools of program synthesis for computer-aided education of pupils and students. Starting from the automatic correction of learners' work in programming education, he further evolved this line of work to detect misunderstandings and give learning feedback and grades, also in subjects like mathematics and language learning.

The medal comes with prize money in the amount of 60,000 euros.
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MPI-SWS students receive ACM SIGPLAN Dissertation Award two years in a row

Ralf Jung's thesis, entitled Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language, has been recognized with the 2021 ACM SIGPLAN John C. Reynolds Doctoral Dissertation Award. (The award this year was shared with Gagandeep Singh, a doctoral student at ETH Zurich). Ralf was advised by MPI-SWS faculty member Derek Dreyer.

This is the second year in a row that the ACM SIGPLAN Dissertation Award was given to an MPI-SWS student. ...
Ralf Jung's thesis, entitled Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language, has been recognized with the 2021 ACM SIGPLAN John C. Reynolds Doctoral Dissertation Award. (The award this year was shared with Gagandeep Singh, a doctoral student at ETH Zurich). Ralf was advised by MPI-SWS faculty member Derek Dreyer.

This is the second year in a row that the ACM SIGPLAN Dissertation Award was given to an MPI-SWS student. Last year it was awarded to Filip Niksic for his thesis on Combinatorial Constructions for Effective Testing, supervised by Rupak Majumdar.

The award, first given in 2001, recognizes outstanding doctoral dissertations in the area of Programming Languages.
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Ralf Jung receives ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

Ralf Jung's doctoral dissertation on "Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language" has received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention. The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is considered to be one of the most prestigious international dissertation awards in the area of computer science, and there are only two Honorable Mentions given for the award each year. The Honorable Mention Award comes with a prize of $10,000 and an invitation to accept the award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco. ...
Ralf Jung's doctoral dissertation on "Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language" has received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention. The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is considered to be one of the most prestigious international dissertation awards in the area of computer science, and there are only two Honorable Mentions given for the award each year. The Honorable Mention Award comes with a prize of $10,000 and an invitation to accept the award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco.

Ralf's work has previously received the ETAPS Doctoral Dissertation Award and the Otto Hahn Medal, as well as being featured in the April 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM in an article entitled "Safe Systems Programming in Rust". For more details see the Saarland Informatics Campus press release.
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Otto Hahn Medal awarded to two MPI-SWS students

Ralf Jung and Bilal Zafar have each been awarded a 2021 Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievement. The Max Planck Society awards the Otto Hahn Medal annually to young scientists in recognition of outstanding scientific achievement. Ralf was awarded the medal for his work on the first formal foundations for the cutting-edge systems programming language Rust, while Bilal was awarded the medal for his work on developing responsible and trustworthy AI systems that can help reduce discrimination and polarisation in society. ...
Ralf Jung and Bilal Zafar have each been awarded a 2021 Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievement. The Max Planck Society awards the Otto Hahn Medal annually to young scientists in recognition of outstanding scientific achievement. Ralf was awarded the medal for his work on the first formal foundations for the cutting-edge systems programming language Rust, while Bilal was awarded the medal for his work on developing responsible and trustworthy AI systems that can help reduce discrimination and polarisation in society. Ralf obtained his PhD in August 2020, and was advised by Derek Dreyer. Ralf is now a postdoc at MPI-SWS and research affiliate at MIT. Bilal obtained his PhD in February 2019, and was advised by Krishna Gummadi and Manuel Gomez Rodriguez. Bilal is now an Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services.
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MPI-SWS researchers receive multiple awards at ETAPS

MPI-SWS researchers Rupak Majumdar, Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, and Georg Zetzsche have received the EAPLS Best Paper Award for their TACAS 2021 paper: General Decidability Results for Asynchronous Shared-Memory Programs: Higher-Order and Beyond.

In addition, a TACAS 2021 paper by Rosa Abbasi and Eva Darulova (along with their collaborators  Jonas Schiffl, Mattias Ulbrich, and Wolfgang Ahrendt) was one of only a handful of papers nominated for the EAPLS Best Paper Award: Deductive Verification of Floating-Point Java Programs in KeY. ...
MPI-SWS researchers Rupak Majumdar, Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, and Georg Zetzsche have received the EAPLS Best Paper Award for their TACAS 2021 paper: General Decidability Results for Asynchronous Shared-Memory Programs: Higher-Order and Beyond.


In addition, a TACAS 2021 paper by Rosa Abbasi and Eva Darulova (along with their collaborators  Jonas Schiffl, Mattias Ulbrich, and Wolfgang Ahrendt) was one of only a handful of papers nominated for the EAPLS Best Paper Award: Deductive Verification of Floating-Point Java Programs in KeY.


Lastly, Michael Sammler and Rodolphe Lepigre received the Most Distinguished Tool Feature Award in the 2021 VerifyThis Competition, for their RefinedC entry, which was cited for supporting automated verification of C programs in Iris/Coq.
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ETAPS dissertation award and CACM article for Ralf Jung and his work on Rust

Ralf Jung's doctoral dissertation on "Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language" has received the ETAPS Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2021. The award is given to the PhD student who has made the most original and influential contribution to the research areas in the scope of the ETAPS conferences, and has graduated in 2021 at a European academic institution. Ralf was advised by MPI-SWS faculty member Derek Dreyer.

A committee of international experts evaluated candidate dissertations with respect to originality, ...
Ralf Jung's doctoral dissertation on "Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language" has received the ETAPS Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2021. The award is given to the PhD student who has made the most original and influential contribution to the research areas in the scope of the ETAPS conferences, and has graduated in 2021 at a European academic institution. Ralf was advised by MPI-SWS faculty member Derek Dreyer.

A committee of international experts evaluated candidate dissertations with respect to originality, relevance, and impact to the field, as well as the quality of writing. The committee found that Dr. Ralf Jung's dissertation is very well-written and makes several highly original contributions in the area of programming language semantics and verification. The committee was also particularly impressed by the dissertation for its technical depth, the quality and quantity of the associated published work, as well as its relevance and impact both in academia and industry.

Ralf's work on Rust was also featured in a recent Communications of the ACM article: Safe Systems Programming in Rust by Ralf Jung, Jacques-Henri Jourdan, Robbert Krebbers, and Derek Dreyer. The article appeared in the April 2021 issue of CACM, together with a short video about this work produced by ACM.

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Max Planck researchers publish 8 papers at POPL 2021!

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) and the new Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) have authored a total of 8 papers accepted to POPL 2021 (over 10% of all accepted papers).  This is the fourth year in a row that MPI-SWS researchers have published 5+ papers in POPL.  Furthermore, two Max Planck papers were awarded a Distinguished Paper Award. Congratulations to all our POPL authors! ...
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) and the new Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) have authored a total of 8 papers accepted to POPL 2021 (over 10% of all accepted papers).  This is the fourth year in a row that MPI-SWS researchers have published 5+ papers in POPL.  Furthermore, two Max Planck papers were awarded a Distinguished Paper Award. Congratulations to all our POPL authors!

MPI-SWS papers:

MPI-SP papers:
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