Steve Blackburn

Steve Blackburn is a research scientist at Google DeepMind and professor of computer science at the Australian National University in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. His primary research focus is on programming language implementation, with expertise spanning memory management, virtual machines, and performance analysis. He has served in significant leadership roles including Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion (2016-2019) and as Program Chair for PLDI 2015 and General Chair for PLDI 2023.

Blackburn's research interests center on making software run faster and more power-efficiently on modern hardware. His primary areas include microarchitectural support for managed languages, fast and efficient garbage collection, and the design and implementation of virtual machines. He maintains a strong interest in sound methodology and infrastructure for successful research innovation. His work bridges theoretical computer science with practical systems implementation, with particular focus on memory management frameworks and performance benchmarking.

His publication record reveals a consistent focus on memory management systems, with recent work exploring garbage collection in modern contexts including CRuby, Julia, mobile devices, and memory-disaggregated datacenters. His research shows an evolution from foundational garbage collection algorithms toward practical implementations addressing real-world constraints in contemporary programming languages and hardware platforms. A notable trend is his increasing focus on quantifying and understanding the true costs of garbage collection in production environments.

• Fellow of the ACM

Blackburn has supervised numerous doctoral students including Zhen He, John Zigman, Robin Garner, Ting Cao, and currently advises Wenyu Zhao, Zixian Cai, and others. He has also served on multiple program committees for major conferences including PLDI, ASPLOS, ISMM, and OOPSLA, demonstrating his significant contributions to the programming languages and systems research community. His service includes editorial roles for ACM Transactions on Programming Language Applications and Systems from 2017-2020.

He leads two major research infrastructure projects: the MMTk memory management framework and the DaCapo benchmark suite, both of which have become foundational tools for researchers in programming languages and systems. These projects reflect his commitment to shared research infrastructure and reproducible methodology in systems research.