Stephen Chong

Stephen Chong is a Gordon McKay Professor in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where he co-directs the Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science program. His research intersects programming languages and information security, focusing on language-based security frameworks.

• Education: PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University (2008), B.Sc.(Hons) and B.A. from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand).
• Research: Develops tools like Formulog (Datalog + SMT for static analysis) and Accrue (Java interprocedural analysis), emphasizing security guarantees proportional to programmer effort.
• Grants: Funded by NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, and Google Faculty Research Award.

Recent publications focus on neurosymbolic approaches (e.g., Guess & Sketch), Datalog synthesis (e.g., Making Formulog Fast), and quantitative robustness in cyber-physical systems. His group has pioneered formal methods for secure assembly transpilation and sensor attack modeling.

Awards:

• NSF CAREER Award
• AFOSR Young Investigator Award
• Sloan Research Fellowship

Advising: Supervised numerous PhD and senior thesis students, including Aaron Bembenek, Anitha Gollamudi, and Lucas Waye. Mentored projects like AbcDatalog (multi-threaded Datalog engine) and Shill (secure shell scripting).

Labs/Teams: Leads the Programming Languages at Harvard group, collaborating with institutions globally. Organized workshops (e.g., NSF Workshop on Formal Methods for Security) and chaired committees at conferences like CSF, POPL, and PLDI.