Syntax and recursion Professors and Supervisors

Ofer TchernichovskiView profile

Professor

City University of New YorkUnited States

Ofer Tchernichovski is a Professor of Psychology at Hunter College, CUNY, specializing in Animal Behavior, Cognitive Psychology, and Social Learning. His research focuses on vocal learning mechanisms in songbirds and their parallels with human speech development, including how sleep, cultural evolution, and social interaction shape communication. He leads the Laboratory of Social Learning & Cultural Evolution . Education: PhD in Zoology from Tel Aviv University. Research emphasizes cultural transmission in zebra finches, including song culture emergence, dopaminergic influences on monogamy, and the stepwise development of vocal syntax. His lab explores collective intelligence through virtual world experiments, such as analyzing ferry rating systems and crowd-sourced decision-making. Collaborations span neuroscience, computer science, and behavioral economics. Key contributions include demonstrating sleep’s role in song learning, developing recursive self-training for aphasia therapy, and uncovering shared rhythmic categorization between birds and humans. He has pioneered techniques like vocal robot interaction and functional MRI in avian brains. Lab activities involve large-scale online experiments (e.g., using Unity and PsyNet) to study social learning dynamics and governance challenges. Ongoing projects address constraints on cultural evolution, free-rider incentives, and computational modeling of behavioral systems.

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Michael WilsonView profile

Assistant Professor

Yale UniversityUnited States

Michael Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Linguistics & Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. Previously, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Yale University under Bob Frank, focusing on argument structure and computational linguistics. His research explores how verb meanings relate to syntactic structures, employing generative models and experimental methodologies. Collaborations include work with Tom Roeper on recursion acquisition, Shota Momma on sentence production, and Brian Dillon on syntactic agreement effects. Research Interests: Argument Structure Alternations Multidominance and P-conflation in syntax Processing of experiencer verbs Computational modeling of learnability Language production mechanisms He actively contributes to open-source research tools through GitHub repositories such as clay-lab/structural-alternations and experimental survey frameworks .

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Joseph LeaseView profile

Professor

California College of the ArtsUnited States

Joseph Lease is a Professor in the Writing and Literature Program at California College of the Arts (CCA), where he actively contributes to the academic and creative life of the institution. His work bridges literary scholarship, poetic innovation, and public engagement, placing him at the forefront of contemporary American poetry. Professor, Writing and Literature Program, California College of the Arts Advisory Board Member, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Featured Reader at institutions including Stanford, Yale, Brown, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church Lease's research and creative interests center on the intersections of personal and collective trauma, spiritual inquiry, and lyrical innovation. His poetry explores themes of death, identity, environmental collapse, and emotional vulnerability through a confessional yet formally rigorous style. Influenced by Jack Spicer and the American avant-garde, Lease employs sparse vocabulary, open parentheses, and recursive syntax to evoke psychological and existential depth. His recent publications, including Fire Season (2023) and The Body Ghost (2018), reflect a sustained engagement with global and personal apocalypse, healing, and the fragility of being. These works have been recognized for their musicality, emotional intensity, and philosophical depth, establishing Lease as a vital voice in 21st-century poetry. Lease’s publications span major literary journals and anthologies such as The Best American Poetry , The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry , The New York Times , The Paris Review , and The Boston Review . His work often blends the secular and the sacred, using poetic form to navigate grief, memory, and political consciousness. His honors include: Academy of American Poets Prize Philip Whalen Award for Now What Multiple grants from Columbia University, Brown University, Harvard University, and CCA Lease has advised and influenced emerging writers through his teaching and public readings. Though no formal students are listed, his mentorship is evident through his role as an educator and his participation in literary communities. He has received institutional support through grants and awards that have enabled his creative output. His work has been featured in curated events at venues such as City Lights Books, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the AWP Conference, reflecting broad recognition in both academic and artistic circles. Lease is associated with PennSound, The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, and KQED, where his readings are archived. He is also a member of the advisory board for the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , contributing to the scholarly infrastructure of poetic studies. His work continues to evolve through collaborations, performances, and publications that challenge and expand the boundaries of contemporary poetry.

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Katie SchulerView profile

Assistant Professor

University of PennsylvaniaUnited States

Katie Schuler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how children acquire language, particularly through distributional learning and regularization of linguistic variation. She leads the Child Language Lab , which investigates topics like recursive structures, statistical learning, and phonological development. Key research areas: Language Acquisition, Neurolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, and Statistical Language Learning. Teaching: Courses include Neurolinguistics , Data Science for Studying Language and the Mind , and Introduction to Linguistics . Her recent publications examine how similarity and consistency shape language learning, children’s regularization of variation, and constraints on recursive structure acquisition. She has received awards such as the Best paper by untenured scientists (2023).

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Yevgen MatusevychView profile

Researcher

University of GroningenNetherlands

Yevgen Matusevych is a researcher in the field of computational linguistics, affiliated with the Faculty of Arts and the Computational Linguistics department. His work bridges theoretical and applied research in natural language processing, bilingualism, and speech modeling. Research Interests: Primary focus on computational linguistics, with emphasis on bilingual sentence processing, phonetic learning, and cognitive plausibility in language models. Publications: Active in peer-reviewed research since 2013, recent work explores bilingual language models, mutual exclusivity bias in speech models, and phonetic learning as perceptual space modeling. Collaborations: Extensive external collaborations in computational linguistics, particularly in multimodal learning and cross-linguistic studies. Key Trends: His articles highlight the intersection of natural language processing, bilingualism, and cognitive science, with sub-fields spanning speech recognition, neural architectures, and psycholinguistic theories of language acquisition.

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Xiaokang QiuView profile

Associate Professor

Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States

Xiaokang Qiu is an Associate Professor at the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering , Purdue University , with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2013). His research focuses on Programming Languages and Software Engineering , particularly theories, algorithms, and tools for program synthesis, verification, and logic-based analysis. Research Interests His work addresses: Formal methods for heap-manipulating programs using separation logic Automated deduction and decision procedures for data structures Syntax-guided synthesis of concurrent and bit-vector programs Integration of machine learning with formal verification Scalable verification of hardware memory consistency Network protocol optimization through program synthesis Recent Publications Recent work includes PLDI 2025 on concurrent string synthesis, POPL 2024 on bit-vector synthesis, and POPL 2023 on comparative network design. His tools like STRAND and VCDryad enable automated verification of complex data-structure manipulations. Grants & Awards Recipient of: NSF SHF Small Award (2024, co-PI, $593K) NSF FMitF Award (2023, PI, $750K) Tenure at Purdue (2023) Professional Service Active in program committees for PLDI , POPL , CAV , and ATVA conferences. Developed tools like DryadSynth (PLDI 2020), ImpSynt (OOPSLA 2017), and JSketch (ESEC/FSE 2015).

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Guilhem JaberView profile

Associate Professor

IMDEA Software InstituteSpain

Guilhem Jaber is an Associate Professor at University of Nantes , affiliated with the Gallinette team in the LS2N research laboratory . His work focuses on operational game semantics, contextual equivalence, and formal verification of higher-order programs with computational effects. Research Grants RECIPROG (2021-2025): ANR PRC Project, local coordinator CAVOC (2021-2025): Inria-Nomadic Labs agreement, project investigator CANofGAS (2022-2025): Inria Exploratory Action, co-investigator Scientific Awards Distinguished Paper Award at ICFP'21 Supervision Axel Kerinec: Postdoc on CANofGAS project Hamza Jaafar: PhD on CAVOC project Peio Borthelle: PhD co-advised with Beniamino Accattoli His research bridges game semantics with operational techniques, particularly for algebraic effects, parametric polymorphism, and separation logic. He actively participates in program committees for POPL, GALOP, and HOPE workshops.

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Daniele Nantes-SobrinhoView profile

Adjunct Professor

IMDEA Software InstituteSpain

Daniele Nantes-Sobrinho is a tenured Adjunct Professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Brasília, currently on sabbatical leave. She concurrently serves as a Research Fellow at Imperial College London. She obtained her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Brasília in 2013, with research focused on equational unification in security protocol analysis. Education: Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Brasília, 2013 Research Interests: Her work develops mathematical structures and logical foundations for modeling, specifying, and verifying critical systems. Core areas include: Formal Methods, Separation Logic, Verification, Logical Methods for Computer Science, Rewriting, Unification, Nominal Techniques, Security Verification, and Behavioral Types. Publications: Her 15 most recent articles (2018-2023) cluster around Formal Methods, with emphases on Nominal Techniques, Concurrency, Unification/Algorithms, and Verification. Trends show increasing focus on non-determinism in concurrent systems and certified unification algorithms. Student Advising: Current MSc Students: Daniella Santaguida Magalhães, Gabriela de Souza Ferreira, Leonardo Melo Batista, Ali Khãn Ribeiro Former Students: Bruno Falcão (Undergraduate), Vinícius Sugimoto (Undergraduate), Andrés Gonzalez (MSc), Deivid Vale (MSc), Bruno Delboni (MSc) Affiliations: Member of the Theoretical Computer Science Group (GTC-UnB) and external collaborator for the VIDI project Unifying Correctness for Communicating Systems .

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Steve ZdancewicView profile

Professor

IMDEA Software InstituteSpain

Steve Zdancewic is the Schlein Family President's Distinguished Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research spans programming languages, computer security, formal verification, and type theory, with significant contributions to LLVM verification, program synthesis, and quantum programming. He co-leads Penn's Programming Languages Research Group with Benjamin Pierce and Stephanie Weirich. His research focuses on: Programming language foundations (type theory, linear logic, semantics) Formal verification (Coq, LLVM, interaction trees) Security (information-flow control, memory safety) Emerging paradigms (quantum programming, secure distributed systems) Publication trends reveal deep engagement with formal methods (67%), programming language design (20%), and systems security (13%), primarily using Coq for mechanized verification. Recent works demonstrate increased focus on parallel/streaming computation and synthesis techniques. Awards Distinguished Paper Awards (ECOOP 2023, POPL 2020) Schlein Family President's Distinguished Professor (2021) Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award (2018) IEEE MICRO Top Picks (2013) Sloan Fellowship (2009-2010) NSF CAREER Award (2004) Best Paper Awards (SOSP 2001, ICFP 1999) Research Leadership Directs multiple NSF-funded projects including DeepSpec (verified systems infrastructure), Vellvm (LLVM semantics), and ExCAPE (program synthesis). Advises 5 PhD students and 31 former advisees/postdocs. Served as General Chair for POPL 2025 and associate chair for PLDI/ICFP/POPL. Infrastructure Leads the Vellvm project developing Coq-based LLVM semantics, the Interaction Trees framework for recursive/impure programs, and Qwire for quantum circuit verification. Maintains active collaborations with Galois Inc. and INRIA.

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