WASP
Washington Advanced Systems for Programming
The WASP Group in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington conducts groundbreaking research in the design, implementation, and theory of programming languages, compilers, programming tools, and programming environments.
We encourage you to contact group members for more information.
Current Members
- Faculty
- Graduate Students
Publications (a hopefully-complete list in reverse chronological order)
Current Projects
This list tends to lag reality a bit, but we're excited about our work on the following (many of which have downloads available):
- Clamp
- Module systems for systems code to encapsulate architectural assumptions
- Diesel
- A next-generation object-oriented language combining modularity with extensibility
- Rhodium
- A framework for provably correct compiler optimizations
- Scat
- Scalable Concurrency Abstractions via Transactions
- Seminal
- An approach to searching for good compiler error-messages in advanced languages
- Whirlwind
- A multilingual optimizing compiler supporting OO languages, staged compilation, and provably correct optimizations
Past Major Projects
This list includes important projects pursued by us that serve as the intellectual background and foundation for our current projects:
- AliasJava
- An extension to Java with an ownership type system for controlling aliasing
- ArchJava
- An extension to Java allowing the high-level architecture of an application to be expressed directly in the code, and checked automatically by the typechecker
- Cecil
- A purely OO language incorporating multiple dispatching, a classless object model, predicate objects, and a flexible static type system
- Cobalt
- A framework for provably correct compiler optimizations
- Cyclone
- A safe C-level programming language with user-controlled checking and performance
- Diamond, F(EML)
- An extension to EML supporting flexible parameterized modules
- DyC and Calpa
- Dynamic compilation for C
- EML
- An extension to ML that generalizes ML's datatype and function constructs to support OO-style extensibility while retaining modular typechecking and compilation
- HydroJ
- A language for distributed messaging using semistructured data
- MultiJava and RMJ
- Java extensions supporting multiple dispatching and open classes while retaining modular typechecking and compilation
- SCF
- Automatically constructing staged compilers
- Vortex
- A multilingual optimizing compiler for OO languages
Regular Activities and Courses
- CSE590P
- a graduate seminar / reading-group on programming languages, has a different theme each quarter
- CSE591PG
- the WASP Group meeting, an informal venue for work-in-progress, currently meets Mondays at 4:00PM in CSE503.
- CSE505
- a graduate "quals" course on programming-language concepts, offered annually
- CSE501
- a graduate "quals" course on program analysis and compilers, offered most years
- CSE401
- an undergraduate compilers course, offered 2-3 quarters each year
- CSE341
- an undergraduate programming-languages course, offered 3 quarters each year
- CSE303
- an undergraduate software development and tools course, offered 3 quarters each year
We also have advanced special-topics courses on a less regular schedule. Here are the most recent examples:
- Sp07: On the Design and Implementation of Static Analysis Tools (Tom Ball, Microsoft Research)
- Wi07: Advanced Topics in Programming Languages (Grossman)
- Sp06: Formal Verification of Computer Systems (Shaz Qadeer, Microsoft Research)
- Wi04: Language-Based Techniques for Improving C-Level Software Quality (Grossman)
- Sp02: Programming Language Design Lab (Chambers)
Joining Us
We are seeking new group members, both to improve and to complement our current initiatives. If you're excited about research that leads to better (more reliable, more extensible, more secure, more flexible, more efficient) software, the WASP Group might be a good match. (A partial list of some potential project ideas may be found here, for people at UW.)
- UW CSE Undergrads: we may have "490" projects that meet your interests. Come talk to us.
- UW CSE Grads: Plenty of "quals" projects are available. Come talk to us. Also, we encourage anyone interested to attend 590P and/or the WASP Group meeting.
- Prospective Graduate Students: If you're not currently at UW but you're thinking about graduate school and programming languages, we encourage you to apply. Feel free to contact us with any questions about our research group or UW. However, please understand that department admissions are handled centrally by the department, and we cannot make any offers or guarantees regarding admission. Information on the department's Ph.D. program and applying to it is available here.
Collaborators
We are fortunate to enjoy strong connections with other research groups in the department, including Software Engineering, Computer Architecture, Networking and Operating Systems, and ZPL (a high-performance parallel programming language). UW graduate students are encouraged to explore research areas that interest them; having "close research neighbors" creates many opportunities.
Some projects are collaborations with other institutions or grew out of such collaborations:
- C-- is one target for Whirlwind, and C-- is adopting Vortex's composed dataflow analysis framework and considering Cobalt/Rhodium's approach to provably correct optimizations
- Cyclone is a joint project with colleagues at Harvard, University of Maryland, and AT&T Research
Alumni
We are proud and honored to have many great and successful former group members. Here is a list of our Ph.D. graduates:
- Keunwoo Lee (now at Google)
- Sorin Lerner (now at UCSD)
- Todd Millstein (now at UCLA)
- Jonathan Aldrich (now at CMU)
- Vass Litvinov (now at Reservoir Labs, Inc.)
- Matthai Philipose (now at Intel Research)
- Markus Mock (now at Google)
- Michael Ernst (now at MIT)
- David Grove (now at IBM Research)
- Jeff Dean (now a Google Fellow)