Senior Research Associate in Types for Incorrectness

The role

This is an opportunity to join a team researching a new and exciting foundation for static type systems as part of the 3-year project Types for Incorrectness, led by Dr. Steven Ramsay.    

It is often said that a typical purpose of a static type system to is to detect runtime errors at compile time, but very few systems are designed with this in mind.  Indeed, traditional type systems are incapable of reasoning about programs with bugs: since well-typed programs cannot go wrong, programs harbouring runtime errors simply don’t exist as far as the type system is concerned.   By contrast, two-sided type systems (Ramsay and Walpole, POPL’24), a new generalisation of traditional static type systems, can both certify that correct programs are type safe, and certify that defective programs have a bug.  This second ability underpins the use of type systems in precision bug-finding, with zero false positives, and opens exciting possibilities for new type-based static analyses for dynamic languages like Erlang, Elixir and Python.

The Senior Research Associate role is expected to lead the investigation of the algorithmic aspects of these systems and the design and implementation of prototype tools for Erlang or Elixir.  They will engage with our project partners to understand how Erlang/Elixir developers can make use of program analyses for bug finding and, ultimately, turn the theory of two-sided type systems into a tool that can really benefit the community.

What will you be doing?

You will lead on the development of algorithms and prototype tools for reasoning about programs with bugs based on two-sided type systems. 

In particular:

• Designing and analysing algorithms for type inference.
• Designing and analysing type systems suitable for bug finding.
• Implementing prototype static analysis tooling.
• Authoring research papers suitable for venues in programming languages.
• Conducting case studies to evaluate potential impact.
• Engaging with the Erlang/Elixir community on relevant practical aspects of the project.

You should apply if

• You have a PhD in programming languages, logic, formal verification or a related field.
• You have some experience building programming language tooling (e.g. compilers, interpreters, program analysis tools, program synthesis tools, documentation generators) through research, teaching or hobby projects.
• You have some background in formal aspects of programming language theory, such as operational semantics, type systems, or program logics.
• You can communicate technical concepts clearly to both academic & non-academic audiences.
• You are excited about the idea of making elegant theory work in practice, and building a tool that programmers will really use and value.

Additional information

For informal queries please contact: cs-exec@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Steven Ramsay (steven.ramsay@bristol.ac.uk)

To find out more about what it's like to work in the Faculty of Engineering, and how the Faculty supports people to achieve their potential, please see our staff blog:

https://engineering.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/category/engineering-includes-me/

Contract type: Open ended with fixed-funding until 28/02/2029

This advert will close at 23:59 UK time on Monday 24th November.

Interviews are expected to take place on Monday 19th January.

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