Zena M. Ariola

Zena M. Ariola is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Oregon and serves as Associate Department Head. She received her Laurea summa cum laude in Informatics from the University of Pisa in 1980 and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1992.

• Education:
  • BS, 1980, University of Pisa, Italy
  • PhD, 1992, Harvard University

Her research focuses on the foundational aspects of programming languages, particularly the semantics of control flow operators, lambda-calculus with explicit recursion, and high-level hardware description languages. She explores connections between control operators and classical logic via the Curry-Howard correspondence, with applications to security and hardware design.

Key Research Trends from her publications include: modeling control flow with continuations and prompts, formalizing classical logic in computational frameworks, and refining term rewriting systems for correctness in hardware and functional programming. Her work spans theoretical formalism and practical compiler design.

Scientific Awards:

• NSF Research Initiation Award (1994)
• NSF Career Award (1996)
• Best paper award nominee at ESOP2012

She has collaborated with institutions like the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Her teaching includes courses on programming language principles and logic.