Jan Vitek

Jan Vitek is a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He also holds an appointment at Charles University in Prague supported by an ERC.CZ grant. With a background rooted in Czechoslovakia (birth) and Switzerland (education), Prof. Vitek has established himself as a leading researcher in programming languages and systems.

Prof. Vitek's research spans programming language design, implementation, and application across multiple domains. His work has significantly impacted real-time embedded systems, concurrent and distributed systems, and more recently, scalable data analytics. He has published extensively in top venues including Programming Languages, Virtual Machines, Compilers, Software Engineering, Real-time Computing, and Bioinformatics.

His publication record shows a clear evolution from foundational work on programming language theory to practical implementations and modern data science applications. Early work focused on ownership types and real-time Java systems, while recent publications center on dynamic languages (particularly R and Julia), compiler optimizations, and large-scale code analysis. His research demonstrates consistent innovation in bridging theoretical foundations with practical implementations.

Selected Awards:

• Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize (2020)
• ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award (2019)
• ECOOP Test of Time Award (2018)
• ISSTA Distinguished Artifact Award (2018)
• OOPSLA Distinguished Artifact Award (2017)

As an advisor, Prof. Vitek has mentored numerous PhD students through successful thesis defenses on topics ranging from type stability in Julia to analyzing large code repositories. He has also been deeply involved in the research community through conference organization, having chaired major events including SPLASH, PLDI, ECOOP, ISMM and LCTES. Currently serving as Editor in Chief of TOPLAS, he continues to shape the field while actively conducting research with his team at the PRL lab.

His research group, the PRL (Programming Research Laboratory) and PRL-PRG, focuses on creating beautiful code that solves real-world problems, with particular emphasis on making software development more efficient, reliable, and accessible.