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I am a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, where I lead the Programming Languages and Systems Group. Previously, I was an assistant professor at  the Toyota Technological Institute  and the University of Chicago. I received my Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science. I am interested in most aspects of programming languages and systems, especially those that overlap with algorithms and parallelism.  

I am a co-inventor of self-adjusting computation and the co-creator of the CEAL and the DeltaML languages for self-adjusting computation.  I co-invented several sequential and parallel algorithms, including algorithms for dynamic trees, dynamic and kinetic meshing,  and statistical learning.  I am a designer of an efficient, incremental system for large-scale data processing.  My first result as a researcher was bounds on the data locality of the popular work-stealing algorithm for parallel scheduling, and an  affinity-guided work-stealing algorithm, which is used by Intel's Threading Building Blocks (TBB).  I currently work on problems related to parallel computing, self-adjusting computation, and provenance.  

"One of the most striking features of recent discussions in the history and philosophy of science is the realization that events and developments [...] occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound by certain ‘obvious’ methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them. This liberal practice, I repeat, is not just a fact of the history of science. It is both reasonable and absolutely necessary for the growth of knowledge."   ---- Paul Feyerabend

News and Announcements

  • Ezgi Cicek wins an Anita Borg Scholarship (April 2012).
  • TAPP 2012: Please submit a paper to  TAPP 2012 workshop on provenance and related areas such databases, programming languages, security, and systems.   TAPP 2012 will be run as a real workshop so you will have an opportunity to receive feedback on your ongoing work.  

Research Projects

Publications

      Also at Google scholar citations.

Curriculum Vitae

  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Academic Genealogy
    • Advisors: Guy Blelloch and Robert Harper. 
    • My Erdos number is 3 (Acar -> Miller -> Kleitmann -> Erdos)

Research Group

Current members

Alumni

Recent Interns

Teaching

Current

Past

  • Winter 2008: Type Systems for Programming Languages.
    University of Chicago 
  • Fall 2006: Programming Languages (CMSC 321).
    University of Chicago 
  • Fall 2006: Programming Languages (CMSC 221).
    University of Chicago 
  • Fall 2005: Programming Languages (CMCS 321).
    University of Chicago

Professional Activities

Editor

  • Guest Editor for Journal of Functional Programming Special Issue on ICFP 2010.

Program Committees

  • PLDI 2013.  Program Committee.
  • FOSSACS 2013.  Program Committee.
  • TAPP 2012.  Program Co-Chair.  (USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance).
  • DAMP 2012. General Chair. (ACM Workshop on Declarative Aspects and Applications of Multicore Programming).  
  • DAMP 2012.  Program Committee.
  • POPL 2012. External Review Committee.
  • ESA 2011. Program Committee.
  • TAPP 2011. Program Committee.
  • ICFP 2010. Program Committee.
  • ML Workshop 2009. Program Committee.
  • IFP 2008. Program Committee.

Keynotes, Distinguished Lectures, Summer Schools

  • NSF-CPATH Lecture on Parallelism: Automatic Granularity Control for Efficient Parallelism. University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras, 2012.
  • NSF-CPATH Lecture on Parallelism: Greedy Sharing: Load Balancing on Weakly Consistent Memory.  University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras, 2012.
  • Keynote. ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation (PEPM) 2009.
  • Summer school on Advanced Functional Programming 2008.
  • Distinguished Lecture. Illinois Institute of Technology 2005.

Invited Workshop Presentation

  • Dagstuhl Seminar on Principles of Provenance 2012.
  • Bertinoro Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures 2011.
  • Theory and Practice of Provenance 2011.
  • Dagstuhl Seminar on Logics and Semantics 2008.
  • IFIP WG2.8 Meeting 2004.

Archive

    DAMP 2012: Thank you for participating at DAMP 2012 workshop on parallelism in Philadelphia, PA, co-located with POPL 2012.