Sheng Chen

Assistant Professor
The Center for Advanced Computer Studies
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Lafayette, LA 70503, USA

Office: Oliver 236 (map)
Email: chen 'at' louisiana.edu
Phone: (337) 482-5807
I joined the faculty of School of Computing and Informatics at UL Lafayette in 2015. I received a BS from Xi'an University of Technology in 2005, an MS from Xidian University in 2008, and a PhD from Oregon State University in 2015.
I am looking for a few self-motivated PhD students to work on programming languages (including, but not limited to, type error debugging and gradual typing), software engineering, and machine learning applications in programming languages. I also have a funded research position for undergraduate students through the NSF REU program. Please send me an email if you are interested. Selected candidates will receive financial support through GRA/GTA.

Research
My research interests are programming languages and software engineering, with a focus on type system design, language usability, functional programming, software product lines, and efficient computing through reuses. I am now investigating computational reuse for verifying software product lines, improving type error debugging and type inference for advanced type systems, and improving static analyses in general. I am also looking into language and runtime support for making reusing computations easier.

Recent Publications [Complete list | DBLP | Google Scholar]

  • Taming Type Annotations in Gradual Typing (OOPSLA'20)
  • Generating Precise Error Specifications for C: A Zero Shot Learning Approach (OOPSLA'19)
  • Blame Tracking and Type Error Debugging (SNAPL'19)
  • Casts and Costs: Harmonizing Safety and Performance in Gradual Typing (ICFP'18)
  • Migrating Gradual Types (POPL'18)
  • How Type Errors Were Fixed and What Students Did? (OOPSLA'17)
  • Learning User Friendly Type Error Messages (OOPSLA'17)
  • A Calculus for Variational Programming (ECOOP'16)
  • Principal Type Inference for GADTs (POPL'16)
  • Variational Typing and Its Applications (PhD dissertation, 2015)

  • More recent selected publications: TOPLAS, POPL'14, ICFP'14, FLOPS'14, ICFP'12

    Projects

    Students
  • Baijun Wu (PhD)
  • John Peter Campora (PhD)

  • Grants
  • NSF CCF: CAREER: Making Type Error Debugging Work, 2018-2023

  • Teaching

    Last modified: October 2020.