Research
Interests
Circuit complexity, automata theory, formal logic,
with applications in high-throughput computing and formal verication
Professional
Experience
DePaul University, Chicago, USA
Assistant Professor, since September 2019
• Topics: computability in group theory, expressiveness of recursion systems,
low-level parallelism for automata, LTL synthesis
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Postdoctoral researcher & research associate at University College, March
2017–June 2019
• Topics: algebraic theory of transducers, counting in descriptive complexity,
cost register automata, verication of linear dynamical systems, learning
transducers, regret in games and reinforcement learning
Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Postdoctoral researcher, February 2014–February 2017
• Topics: circuit complexity of transducers, descriptive complexity, cost register
automata, extreme uniformity in circuit complexity
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
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Education Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
Ph.D., Computer Science and Operations Research, March 2013
• Topic: Automata with a semilinear constraint
• Advisors: Prof. Pierre McKenzie, Prof. Alain Finkel (@ ENS Cachan)
Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France
M.Sc., Mathematical Logic and Theoretical Computer Science, September
2006–July 2007
• Topic: Uniform guided random walks for conformance testing
• Advisor: Asst. Prof. Fatiha Zaidi (@ LRI)
École pour l’Informatique et les Techniques Avancées, Paris, France
Engineer’s degree, Scientic Computing and Image Processing, September
2005–July 2007
• Main project: Vaucanson, a C++ library for weighted automata
• Supervisors: Prof. Jacques Sakarovitch (@ Télécom Paris), Dr. Akim Demaille
B.S., September 2002–July 2005
• Topic: Comparative study of thread usage in fault-tolerant message passing
• Advisor: Asst. Prof. Thomas Hérault (@ LRI)
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2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Teaching
Experience
(last 13 years)
DePaul University, Chicago, USA
Spring 2023 — Instructor for Automata Theory
→ Also in Spring 2020, Spring 2022
Topics: Regular languages, context-free languages
Spring 2023 — Instructor for Theory of Computation
→ Also in Spring 2020
Topics: Turing machines, decidability, reducibility, time and space complexity
Spring 2022 — Instructor for Computer Systems II
→ Also in Winter 2022, Fall 2021, Winter 2021, Fall 2020
Topics: Caches, virtual memory, I/O, network & concurrent programming
Fall 2021 — Instructor for Data Structures I
Topics: Recursion, analysis, linked lists, stack, queues, heaps
Winter 2020 — Instructor for Computer Systems I
Topics: Information representations, assembly, C, processor architecture.
Fall 2019 — Instructor for Data Structures II
Topics: Symbol tables, search trees, hash tables, graphs
University College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Summer 2019 — Lecturer for Digital Systems
→ Also in Winter 2019
Topics: Gates, array circuits, CMOS, registers, assembly, caching, OS, IP
Pembroke College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Fall 2018 — Lecturer for Models of Computation
Topics: Automata, regular languages, Turing machine, computability
St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Summer 2019 — Lecturer for Introduction to formal proofs
Topics: Propositional & predicate logic, natural deduction
Winter 2019 — Lecturer for Algorithms
Topics: Data structures, amortised analysis, linear programming, FPT
Fall 2017 — Lecturer for Computability Theory
Topics: Recursive functions, Turing machines, incompleteness theorems,
randomness
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Winter 2018 — T.A. for Computer Architecture
→ Also in Summer 2017
Topics: Low-level C programming, assembly, processor design
Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Winter 2016 — Organizer for Seminar on advanced automata theory
Topics: Recent research topics in automata theory
Summer 2015 — Lecturer for Second course in formal language theory
Topics: Logics on words, abstract families, bounded languages, rational sets
Winter 2014 — Lecturer for Special chapters in theoretical computer science
Topic: Power series, linear recurrence sequences, Skolem’s problem
Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
Summer 2011 — T.A. for Introduction to theoretical computer science
→ Also in Winter 2011, Summer 2010, Summer 2009
Topics: Finite automata, grammars, Turing machines, decidability,
NP-completeness
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Academic
Supervision
DePaul University, Chicago, USA
• Current supervisions
David Zwerdling (DePaul U.), MSc, starting March 2023
• Topic: RSonPath, a JSON library in Rust relying on low-level paralellism
• Co-supervised with Mateusz Gienieczko (@ Microsoft Ireland)
Corentin Barloy (Univ. Lille), PhD, since September 2020
• Topic: Circuit complexity through algebraic automata theory
• Co-supervised with Charles Paperman (@ Univ. Lille)
• Past supervisions
Ben Merideth (DePaul U.), MSc, September-December 2022
• Topic: Regexes and FPGA programming
Kyle Ockerlund (DePaul U.), MSc, January-December 2021
• Topic: Unboundedness problems in cost-register automata
Kevin Endres (DePaul U.), research project, June 2020-June 2022
• Topic: instruction-level parallelism for string processing
• Co-supervised with Charles Paperman (@ Univ. Lille)
John Yenter-Briars (DePaul U.), continued research project, June-August 2020
• Topic: AutomataTutor, webapp to autograde exercises in automata theory
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corentin Barloy (ENS Paris-Saclay), Master’s internship, February–July 2019
• Topic: Determinization of weigthed automata
• Co-supervised with Shaull Almagor (@ Univ. Oxford)
Bartosz Bednarczyk (ENS Paris-Saclay), Master’s internship, June–August 2018
• Topic: Algebraic theory of regular tree languages
• Co-supervised with Charles Paperman (@ Univ. Lille)
Academic
Service
Review service
• Conferences: CONCUR’23, DLT’23, FSTTCS’22, MFCS’22, LICS’21, STACS’21,
ICALP’20, MFCS’20, CONCUR’20, ICALP’19, LATA’19, STACS’19, MFCS’18, LICS’18,
FoSSaCS’18, DCFS’18, STACS’17, MFCS’17, STACS’16, CSL’16, MFCS’15, FoSSaCS’15,
FSTTCS’15, DLT’15, AFL’14, DLT’13, IWOCA’11, CSR’11, CPM’10, STACS’10
• Journals: IJAC, IJFCS, LMCS, JCSS, JACM, Fundamenta Informaticae, IPL, TOCS,
Math Reviews, SIGACT News
Committee service
• International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR): PC member in 2023
• International Conference on Reachability Problems (RP): PC member in 2022
• International Conference on Foundations of Software Science and Computation
Structures (FoSSaCS): PC member in 2021
• Logic Mentoring Workshop: steering committee member since 2020
Workshop organization
• Logic Mentoring Workshop 2020, 2023: yearly workshop for undergraduate
students
• Autobóz 2019: yearly invitational workshop on automata theory
