Ruben Martins

Ruben Martins is an Assistant Research Professor and Master’s Program Director at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Lisbon, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford and UT Austin. His work focuses on constraint programming, program synthesis, and formal verification, with applications in improving programmer productivity and automating data science tasks.

• Education:
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, Technical University of Lisbon (2013)
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oxford (2014-2015)
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, UT Austin (2015-2017)

Ruben's research bridges constraint programming with program synthesis, aiming to automate tasks such as vulnerability detection, code repair, and SQL synthesis. He developed Open-WBO, a MaxSAT solver that won multiple gold medals and is used in real-world optimization scenarios like seating arrangements for events. His work integrates large language models (LLMs) with traditional methods to enhance software analysis and debugging.

Awards:

• Distinguished Paper Award at PLDI 2018
• Gold Medal in MaxSAT Competitions for Open-WBO

Advising & Grants: Ruben advises Master’s students and directs courses such as 15639, 15604, and others. His research has been supported by grants focusing on program synthesis and cybersecurity.

Labs/Teams: Leads development of Open-WBO and contributes to projects like Crabtree (Rust API testing) and Pryde (evasion attack analysis).