KC at Charles Rivier, Boston, MA
KC at Boston, MA

Kuang-Chen Lu, Ph.D.

I recently earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University, advised by Shriram Krishnamurthi. My research focuses on Programming Languages and Computing Education, particularly their intersection.

During my Ph.D., I interned with the compiler team at RelationalAI, where I worked on the design and implementation of the Rel language, a relaitonal programming language. My contributions centered on higher-order relations.

Previously, I earned an M.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University, advised by Jeremy Siek. My work focused on Gradual Typing. I also worked with Dan Friedman on Relational Programming.

I earned an B.S. in Bioinformatics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, advised by Chaochun Wei.

You can learn more about me by checking my resume / CV and this page.

Ongoing Projects

SMoL Tutor: an intelligent tutoring system for teaching the semantics of programming languages (i.e., how programming languages "work"). This system has been used at Brown and a few other institutions around the world. Please contact me or Shriram to get a copy of the system.

Stacker: a notional machine (a graphical presentation of how computer programs execute). This notional machine is designed to help students form good mental models of scope, mutable variables, mutable data structures, and first-class functions.

Publications

Identifying and Correcting Programming Language Behavior Misconceptions PhD Dissertation

Identifying and Correcting Programming Language Behavior Misconceptions OOPSLA 2024Distinguished Paper

What Happens When Students Switch (Functional) Languages (Experience Report) ICFP 2023

Gradual soundness: Lessons from Static Python Programming 2023

Types for Tables: A Language Design Benchmark Programming 2022Editors' Choice

Higher-order Logic Programming with λKanren μKanren Workshop 2021

Equivalence of Cast Representations in Gradual Typing Master's Thesis

Hypercoercions and a framework for equivalence of cast calculi WGT 2020

Towards a miniKanren with fair search strategies μKanren Workshop 2019

EUPAN enables pan-genome studies of a large number of eukaryotic genomes Bioinformatics 2017

RPAN: rice pan-genome browser for ∼3000 rice genomes NAR 2017

Talks

Stacker: A runnable notional machine for an HtDP-like language (twelfth RacketCon)