Adrian Sampson

Adrian Sampson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University's Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. He leads the Capra research group, focusing on breaking down abstraction barriers and rethinking the hardware-software interface. Prior to his current position, he served as an Assistant Professor at Cornell University from 2016 to 2022 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2015 under advisors Luis Ceze and Dan Grossman.

His research spans computer architecture, programming languages, and compilers, with a notable focus on approximate computing—the concept that computers can be more efficient if allowed to make controlled mistakes. Sampson has made significant contributions to hardware acceleration, FPGA programming, and type systems for heterogeneous computing. His work bridges the gap between software abstractions and hardware realities, particularly in the realm of accelerator design languages.

The publications reveal a consistent trajectory in hardware-software co-design, with recent work focusing on predictable accelerator design, timeline types for hardware description, and geometry types for graphics programming. His research group has produced influential work on tools like Dahlia, a programming language that uses type systems to restrict high-level synthesis programs to subsets with predictable semantics and performance.

• Cornell Bowers CIS Ann S. Bowers Research Excellence Award (2024)
• Cornell Bowers CIS Computer Science Faculty of the Year (2024)
• Distinguished Artifact Awards (ASPLOS 2023, 2024)
• IEEE TCCA Young Computer Architect Award (2021)
• NSF CAREER award (2019)
• Google Faculty Research Award (2016)

Sampson has advised numerous Ph.D. students whose dissertations cover topics like geometry types for graphics programming, lightweight formal methods, and compiler-driven autovectorization. His research has been supported by prestigious organizations including NSF, Google, and Microsoft Research. He serves on numerous program committees and has held leadership roles in the computer architecture and programming languages communities, including serving on the ACM SIGARCH Board of Directors.