Nada AminView profile
Assistant Professor
Nada Amin is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). She holds a PhD from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and degrees from MIT. Her research spans programming language theory, metaprogramming, semantics, and functional programming. Her educational background includes a Doctoral Program in Computer, Communication and Information Sciences from EPFL (2011–2016) and a Master of Engineering and Bachelor of Science from MIT. She has held research positions at TU Darmstadt, University of Cambridge, EPFL, Microsoft Research, and MIT CSAIL. Nada Amin's research focuses on foundational and practical aspects of programming languages. She investigates type systems, staged computation, generative programming, program synthesis, and the semantics of programming languages. Her work often bridges theory and implementation, with applications in verification, compiler construction, and language design. She is particularly known for her contributions to the DOT calculus, collapsing towers of interpreters, and relational programming with miniKanren. Her recent publications reveal a strong trend in advancing programming language foundations, especially in type systems and semantics (e.g., Persimmon, Dolorem, Extensible Metatheory). She integrates functional and logic programming paradigms, explores staged and generative techniques for efficiency and abstraction, and applies these to domains like probabilistic programming and biomedical reasoning. Recipient of the first Michigan Cambridge Research Initiative Grant (with Baris Kasikci, May 2018) 6.170 Letter of Commendation from Prof. Michael Ernst (2005) Peer Bonus at Google for enabling Gmail's CSS compiler for Android Peer Bonus at Google for benefiting numerous projects including Google Apps Nada Amin actively mentors students and collaborates widely in the programming languages community. She has served on numerous program committees (POPL, PLDI, ICFP, OOPSLA, etc.) and organized workshops. Her work is supported by academic and industrial collaborations, and she has contributed to open-source projects. She leads research involving interpreters, compilers, and program transformation systems, often developing tools and frameworks like LMS and Pink.