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Associate professor of computer science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the Theoretical Computer Science Group, a Digital Futures Faculty and a WASP researcher. PhD EPFL, 2010.

My main research interests are in the design and implementation of programming languages, type systems, concurrency, and distributed programming.

In June 2019 I received, together with 8 other individuals, the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award for the development of the Scala language. (Press: EPFL, CMU, KTH CASTOR Center)

Previously, I was a researcher, software engineer, and consultant at Typesafe Inc. Prior to Typesafe, I was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford in the Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) and at EPFL in the Programming Methods Lab (LAMP). Prior to that I was a PhD student of Martin Odersky at EPFL.

I am a top-10 contributor of the Scala project. I am co-author (with Jason Zaugg, Lightbend) of Scala's async/await extension (SIP-22) for asynchronous programming, and one of the lead designers of Scala's futures library (SIP-14). I created Scala's first widely-used actor library, and am the main author of the book "Actors in Scala" (Artima, 2012).

Curriculum Vitae (Sep 2018)

PhD students

• Jonas Spenger (PhD, main supervisor, co-supervisor Paris Carbone)
• Jens Kanstrup Larsen (PhD @ DTU Compute, co-supervisor, main supervisor Alceste Scalas, DTU, Denmark)
• Han Fu (PhD, second supervisor, main supervisor Cyrille Artho)
• Lars Hummelgren (PhD, second supervisor, main supervisor David Broman)

Alumni

• Dr. Viktor Palmkvist (second supervisor, main supervisor David Broman), PhD defended October 8, 2024 (PhD thesis)
• Dr. Xin Zhao, PhD defended February 23, 2021 (PhD thesis, video of public defense)

News

(Note: updated sporadically at best)

• June 2019 -- I received, together with 8 other individuals, the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award for the development of the Scala language. (Press: EPFL, CMU, KTH CASTOR Center)
• December 2018 -- I was promoted to Associate Professor.
• June 2018 -- I became Docent in Computer Science.
• June 2017 -- I received the 2016 Teacher of the Year award of the School of Computer Science and Communication (now EECS) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, for Software Development Academy, the bootcamp education for newly arrived immigrants which I created together with Mattias Wiggberg (KTH) and Farzad Golchin (Novare Potential).
• November 2016 -- The CFP for PLACES 2017 was published. Please consider submitting a paper. PLACES 2017 is co-located with ETAPS 2017 in Uppsala, Sweden.
• November 2016 -- I am going to give a talk on Thursday December 1st at the 10th Annual Multicore Day 2016 which is part of the SICS Software Week 2016. Topic: Safe and Scalable Concurrent Programming in Scala.
• September 2016 -- Our paper Reactive Async: Expressive Deterministic Concurrency (with Simon Geries, Michael Eichberg, and Guido Salvaneschi) has been accepted to the Scala Symposium 2016.
• August 2016 -- My paper LaCasa: Lightweight Affinity and Object Capabilities in Scala with Alex Loiko has been accepted to OOPSLA 2016.
• June 2016 -- I will attend a Dagstuhl Seminar on Theory and Applications of Behavioural Types to be held at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany.
• June 2016 -- I was interviewed by 47 Degrees at Scala Days Berlin 2016 on deterministic concurrency and the future of Scala (video on YouTube).
• June 2016 -- Our pilot project on an intensive programming education for new arrivals to Sweden has received funding from the Wallenberg Foundations (KTH news, ComputerSweden).
• May 2016 -- Our paper Function Passing: A Model for Typed, Distributed Functional Programming (with Heather Miller, Normen Müller, and Jocelyn Boullier) has been accepted to Onward! 2016.
• April 2016 -- I will attend a Dagstuhl Seminar on Programming Language Techniques for Incremental and Reactive Computing to be held at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany.

Publications

Journals and Conference Proceedings

Refereed Workshops and Demos

Invited Papers

Editorship

Theses

Talks

Video recordings of several of my talks available via this YouTube playlist, or via the links provided below.

• invited

  Towards Safer Lightweight Concurrency in Scala,

  Scala Autumn Meetup @ Wolt,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  September 12, 2024.

  [slides]
• invited

  Extending Scala for Safe Concurrent Programming,

  University of Waterloo,

  Waterloo, Canada,

  May 29, 2024.
• invited

  Extending Scala for Safe Concurrent Programming,

  Université de Montréal,

  Montreal, Canada,

  May 24, 2024.
• invited

  Extending Scala for Safe Concurrent Programming,

  McGill University,

  Montreal, Canada,

  May 23, 2024.
• invited

  Keynote: Lightweight Affine Types for Safe Concurrency in Scala,

  VIMPL 2024,

  Lund, Sweden,

  12 March 2024.

  [slides]
• invited

  Keynote: How to Make Distributed Programming Safer using Types,

  34th Nordic Workshop on Programming Theory (NWPT 2023),

  Västerås, Sweden,

  22 November 2023.

  [slides]
• Portals: Teleporting smart edge services to a serverless future,

  Digitalize in Stockholm 2023,

  Karolinska Institutet, Sweden,

  19 October 2023.

  [slides]
• Consistency Types for Replicated Data in a Higher-order Distributed Programming Language,

  <Programming> 2023,

  Tokyo, Japan,

  15 March 2023.

  [slides]
• How to avoid safety hazards when using closures in Scala,

  ScalaCon 2022,

  5 October 2022.

  [slides]

  [video]
• How to avoid safety hazards when using closures in Scala,

  Strange Loop 2022,

  St. Louis, Missouri, USA,

  23 September 2022.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Extending Dataflow Streaming for Stateful Serverless,

  CASTOR Software Days 2022,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  1 September 2022.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Keynote: Towards Robust Large-scale Concurrent and Distributed Programming,

  20th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC 2021),

  Cluj-Napoca, Romania (Virtual),

  30 July 2021.

  [slides]
• invited

  Selected Challenges in Concurrent and Distributed Programming,

  Workshop on Programming Languages and Distributed Systems,

  RISE Computer Science, Stockholm, Sweden,

  5 March 2020.

  [slides]
• Consistency Types for Distributed Programming Languages,

  32nd Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (LCPC 2019),

  Atlanta, GA, USA,

  22 October 2019.

  [slides]
• invited

  Fine-grained Deterministic Parallelization of Static Analyses,

  CASTOR Software Days,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  14 October 2019.

  [slides]
• invited

  Keynote: Serverless Cloud Computing Beyond FaaS: Programming Models and Abstractions,

  2nd Vienna Software Seminar,

  Vienna, Austria,

  29 August 2019.

  [slides]
• invited

  Asynchronous streams in direct style with and without macros,

  Curry On,

  London, UK,

  15 July 2019.

  [slides]

  [video]

  [Curry On]
• Asynchronous streams in direct style with and without macros,

  Scala Days,

  Lausanne, Switzerland,

  13 June 2019.

  [slides]

  [video]

  [video on YouTube]
• Robust, Large-scale Concurrent and Distributed Programming,

  Docent Lecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  17 August 2018.

  [slides]
• invited

  Deterministic Concurrency for Reliable, Large-Scale Software Systems,

  MPI-SWS,

  Kaiserslautern, Germany,

  February 2018.

  [slides]
• invited

  Opening Session: Programming Reactive Systems in Scala: Principles and Abstractions,

  Entwicklertag Frankfurt 2018,

  Frankfurt, Germany,

  February 2018.

  [slides]
• Lineages as a first-class construct for fault-tolerant distributed programming,

  Chaos Engineering Day,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  December 2017.

  [slides]
• invited

  Keynote: Taming Concurrent Programming with Domain-Specific Languages,

  ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Software Engineering for Parallel Systems 2017,

  Vancouver, Canada,

  October 2017.

  [slides]
• Quantifying and Explaining Immutability in Scala,

  Scala Days 2017,

  Copenhagen, Denmark,

  June 2017.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Safe and Scalable Concurrent Programming in Scala,

  10th Annual Multicore Day, SICS Software Week,

  December 2016.

  [slides]

  [video]
• LaCasa: Lightweight Affinity and Object Capabilities in Scala,

  ACM SIGPLAN OOPSLA,

  November 2016.

  [slides]
• Reactive Async: Expressive Deterministic Concurrency,

  ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Scala,

  October 2016.

  [slides]
• invited

  LaCasa: Lightweight Affinity and Object Capabilities in Scala,

  Northeastern University, USA,

  September 2016.

  [slides]
• invited

  Invited Talk: Can we make concurrency in Scala safer?,

  Scala World 2016,

  Rheged Centre, Lake District, UK,

  September 2016.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Invited Talk: Papers vs. Artifacts,

  ECOOP 2016 Doctoral Symposium,

  Rome, Italy,

  July 2016.

  [slides]
• Programming with Futures, Lattices, and Quiescence,

  Scala Days 2016,

  Berlin, Germany,

  June 2016.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Keynote: Reactive Programming in Scala,

  parallel 2016,

  Heidelberg, Germany,

  April 2016.

  [slides]
• invited

  Invited Keynote Talk: Papers vs. Artifacts,

  SPLASH 2015 Doctoral Symposium,

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA,

  October 2015.

  [slides]

  [SPLASH 2015]
• invited

  Keynote: High-Level Concurrency Libraries: Challenges for Tool Support,

  ETX 2015 Eclipse Technology eXchange,

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA,

  October 2015.

  [slides]

  [SPLASH 2015]

  [video]
• A formal model for direct-style asynchronous observables,

  27th Nordic Workshop on Programming Theory (NWPT 2015),

  Reykjavik University, Iceland,

  October 2015.

  [slides]
• Function-Passing Style, A New Model for Asynchronous and Distributed Programming,

  with Heather Miller,

  Scala Days 2015,

  Amsterdam, Netherlands,

  June 2015.

  [video]
• Futures and Async: When to Use Which?,

  Scala Days 2014,

  Berlin, Germany,

  June 2014.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  The Next 700 Asynchronous Programming Models,

  SPLASH 2013 (SPLASH-I),

  Indianapolis, IN,

  October 2013.

  [slides]

  [video]

  [SPLASH 2013]

  
• Simplifying Asynchronous Code With Scala Async,

  Strange Loop 2013,

  St. Louis, MO, USA,

  November 2013.

  [video]

  [Strange Loop 2013]
• Scala Async: A New Way to Simplify Asynchronous Code (Make the Compiler Do It!),

  Scala Days 2013,

  New York City, NY,

  June 2013.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Simplifying Asynchronous Code with Scala Async,

  Skills Matter,

  London, UK,

  June 2013.

  [slides]

  [video]
• Simplifying Asynchronous Code with Scala Async,

  Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (PhillyETE),

  Philadelphia, PA, USA,

  April 2013.

  [slides]

  [video]
• Correctly and Efficiently Combining Concurrency Abstractions,

  Skills Matter,

  London, UK,

  December 2012.

  [slides]

  [video]
• invited

  Futures and Promises in Scala 2.10,

  The Scala eXchange,

  London, UK,

  November 2012.

  [slides]
• invited

  Keynote: On the Integration of the Actor Model in Mainstream Technologies-- The Scala Perspective,

  AGERE! @ SPLASH 2012,

  Tucson, Arizona, USA,

  October 2012.

  [slides]
• Futures and Promises in Scala 2.10,

  with Heather Miller,

  Scala Enthusiasts Lausanne Meeting,

  Lausanne, Switzerland,

  September 2012.

  [slides]
• Futures and Promises in Scala 2.10,

  with Heather Miller,

  Boston Area Scala Enthusiasts,

  Boston, Massachusetts, USA,

  August 2012.

  [slides]
• The Many Flavors of Parallel Programming in Scala,

  Scalathon 2011,

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA,

  July 2011.

  [slides]

  [video]
• Scala for Multicore Programming,

  UPMARC Multicore Computing Summer School,

  Stockholm, Sweden,

  June 2011.

  [resources]
• Parallelizing Machine Learning-- Functionally,

  with Heather Miller,

  Second Annual Scala Workshop,

  Stanford, California, USA,

  June 2011.

  [slides]
• Capabilities for Uniqueness and Borrowing,

  24th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2010),

  Maribor, Slovenia,

  June 2010.

  [slides]
• Lightweight language support for type-based, concurrent event processing,

  First Annual Scala Workshop,

  Lausanne, Switzerland,

  April 2010.

  [slides]

  [video]
• Scala: How to Make Best Use of Functions and Objects,

  with Lukas Rytz and Martin Odersky,

  Tutorial at ACM Symposium on Applied Computing,

  Sierre, Switzerland,

  March 2010.

  [slides]
• Actor-Based Concurrency in Scala,

  with Frank Sommers,

  JavaOne 2009,

  San Francisco, California, USA,

  June 2009.

  [slides]
• invited

  An Overview of Scala,

  Copenhagen Programming Language Seminar (COPLAS),

  Copenhagen, Denmark,

  June 2008.

  [slides]
• Implementing Joins using Extensible Pattern Matching,

  10th International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION'08),

  Oslo, Norway,

  June 2008.

  [slides]
• invited

  Concurrent Programming in Scala: Actors and Joins,

  2nd International Summer School on Trends in Concurrency (TiC'08),

  Prague, Czech Republic,

  June 2008.
• Implementing Joins using Extensible Pattern Matching,

  Workshop on Declarative Aspects of Multicore Programming (DAMP'08) @ POPL 2008,

  San Francisco, California, USA,

  January 2008.
• Actors that Unify Threads and Events,

  9th International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION'07),

  Paphos, Cyprus,

  June 2007.

  [slides]
• Scala Actors-- Scalable Multithreading on the JVM,

  IBM Development Lab,

  Boeblingen, Germany,

  May 2007.

  [slides]

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Copyright © 2006-2024 Philipp Haller. All rights reserved.