Sarah E. Chasins

Sarah E. Chasins is an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, affiliated with the College of Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. She leads the PLAIT Lab (Programming Languages for Approachable and Inclusive Tools), with additional affiliations at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) and collaborations across disciplines.

Her research focuses on democratizing programming through

• Program synthesis
• Human-Computer Interaction for programming languages
• Tools for non-traditional programmers
• Embedded domain-specific language design
• Web automation frameworks

She has developed systems like Ringer for browser automation and Skip Blocks for execution history reuse.

Recent publications highlight trends in

• Direct manipulation programming
• Synthesis-backed refactoring
• Sequence-to-tree code search
• DSL usability for domain experts
• Functional programming practices
• Web script optimization

She has advised numerous graduate and undergraduate researchers, including:

• Current PhD students: Justin Lubin, Eric Rawn, Parker Ziegler
• Alumni: Gabriel Matute (MSc), Rebecca Hicke (undergraduate)

Her service includes committee roles at top conferences like OOPSLA, PLDI, and PLATEAU, as well as teaching courses on

• CS164: Programming Languages and Compilers
• CS294-184: Building User-Centered Programming Tools
• CS39-001: Technology, Society, and Power