Olivier Danvy

Research interests:

Programming and programming languages in general
and functional programming (Scheme, ML), partial evaluation, and continuations in particular.

Teaching:

• During the second quarter this spring (2005),
  I am teaching the DAIMI undergraduate course on programming languages.
• This fall (2005) I am scheduled to take a sabbatical year.

Service:

• The BRICS PhD School.
• Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation (HOSC) -- its local home page and its mirror at SRI
  (née LISP and Symbolic Computation).
• The ICFP steering committee and ICFP 2005.
• The Journal of Functional Programming.

Work:

`Lektor' (associate professor) in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark.

Education:

My alma mater is the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) in Paris, France
(PhD degree in Computer Science, June 1986; Habilitation, January 1993).

Current PhD students:

• Mads Sig Ager.
• Malgorzata Biernacka.
• Dariusz Biernacki.
• Jan Midtgaard (supervised jointly with Ulrik Pagh Schultz).
• Kevin Millikin.
• Henning Korsholm Rohde (supervised jointly with Andrzej Filinski).
• Kristian Støvring (supervised jointly with Andrzej Filinski).

Profile:

• Daimiposten, December 2001.
• Academic genealogy.

Address:

BRICS
Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus
IT-parken, Aabogade 34, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
E-mail: danvy hat brics.dk / danvy hat daimi.au.dk
Office: Room 128, Turing building
Phone (direct): (+45) 89 42 93 39
Fax (departmental): (+45) 89 42 56 01

Recent work:

• A Simple Proof of a Folklore Theorem about Delimited Control
  with Dariusz Biernacki (August 2005).
• An Operational Foundation for Delimited Continuations in the CPS Hierarchy
  with Malgorzata Biernacka and Dariusz Biernacki (August 2005).
• A Syntactic Correspondence between Context-Sensitive Calculi and Abstract Machines
  with Malgorzata Biernacka (July 2005).
• A Dynamic Continuation-Passing Style for Dynamic Delimited Continuations
  with Dariusz Biernacki and Kevin Millikin (May 2005).
• A Concrete Framework for Environment Machines
  with Malgorzata Biernacka (May 2005).
• On Obtaining the Boyer-Moore String-Matching Algorithm by Partial Evaluation
  with Henning Korsholm Rohde (April 2005).
• On the Dynamic Extent of Delimited Continuations (short version)
  with Dariusz Biernacki and Chung-chieh Shan (April 2005).
• Program extraction from proofs of weak head normalization
  with Malgorzata Biernacka and Kristian Støvring (April 2005).
• There and Back Again
  with Mayer Goldberg (January 2005).
• Sur un exemple de Patrick Greussay
  (December 2004, at long last).
• Fast Partial Evaluation of Pattern Matching in Strings
  with Mads Sig Ager and Henning Korsholm Rohde (December 2004).
• CPS Transformation of Beta-Redexes
  with Lasse R. Nielsen (December 2004).
• From Reduction-Based to Reduction-Free Normalization (December 2004).
• A Functional Correspondence between Monadic Evaluators
  and Abstract Machines for Languages with Computational Effects
  with Mads Sig Ager and Jan Midtgaard (December 2004).
• Refocusing in Reduction Semantics
  with Lasse R. Nielsen (November 2004).
• Lambda-Lifting in Quadratic Time
  with Ulrik P. Schultz (June 2004).
• From Interpreter to Logic Engine by Defunctionalization
  with Dariusz Biernacki (March 2004).
• A Functional Correspondence between Call-by-Need Evaluators
  and Lazy Abstract Machines
  with Mads Sig Ager and Jan Midtgaard (February 2004).
• On Evaluation Contexts, Continuations, and the Rest of the Computation
  (January 2004).
• A Rational Deconstruction of Landin's SECD Machine
  Recipient of the 2004 Peter Landin prize (October 2003).
• From Interpreter to Compiler and Virtual Machine: a Functional Derivation
  with Mads Sig Ager, Dariusz Biernacki, and Jan Midtgaard (March 2003).
• A Functional Correspondence between Evaluators and Abstract Machines
  with Mads Sig Ager, Dariusz Biernacki, and Jan Midtgaard (March 2003).
• A New One-Pass Transformation into Monadic Normal Form
  (December 2002).
• A simple CPS Transformation of Control-Flow Information
  with Daniel Damian (December 2001).
• Syntactic Accidents in Program Analysis: On the Impact of the CPS Transformation
  with Daniel Damian (December 2001).
• A First-Order One-Pass CPS Transformation
  with Lasse R. Nielsen (December 2001).
• CPS Transformation of Flow Information, Part II: Administrative Reductions
  with Daniel Damian (October 2001).
• Defunctionalization at Work
  with Lasse R. Nielsen (July 2001).
• A Unifying Approach to Goal-Directed Evaluation
  with Bernd Grobauer and Morten Rhiger (July 2001).
• Normalization by Evaluation with Typed Abstract Syntax
  with Morten Rhiger and Kristoffer Rose (May 2001).
• Type-directed Partial Evaluation
  (July 1999).
• Functional Unparsing
  (May 1998).
• Most of my papers prior to 1996.
• The BRICS publications, my own page there, and
  my list of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server.

Slides:

• Issues about giving a talk and attending one,
  about reading a paper and writing one, and
  about receiving a review and offering one.
• Many Happy Returns.
  Slides of an invited talk at TLCA 2001 about continuations.
  (Also as a ps file and as a gzip'ed ps file.)
• The Mechanical Evaluation of Higher-Order Expressions.
  Slides of a talk at MFPS 1998 in the Peter Landin session.
  (Also as a ps file and as a gzip'ed ps file.)

Forthcoming events:

• The third APPSEM II Workshop (APPSEM05),
  Frauenchiemsee, Germany, September 12-15, 2005.
• The 17th International Workshop on the Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL'05),
  Dublin, Ireland, September 19-21, 2005.
• The First DIKU-IST Joint Workshop on Foundations of Software,
  Copenhagen, Denmark, September 23-24, 2005.
• The Sixth Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP 2005),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 23-24, 2005.
• The 2005 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming,
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 24, 2005.
• The Fourth ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop,
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 25, 2005.
• Functional and Declarative Programming in Education (FDPE05),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 25, 2005.
• The 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2005),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 26-28, 2005.
• The 2005 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML,
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 29, 2005.
• Workshop on Curry and Functional Logic Programming (WCFLP 2005),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 29, 2005.
• The 2005 Haskell Workshop,
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 30, 2005.
• Workshop on MEchanized Reasoning about Languages with varIable biNding (MERλIN 2005),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 30, 2005.
• The Fourth International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE'05),
  Tallinn, Estonia, September 29 - October 1, 2005.

Recent events:

• The Summer School on Program Analysis and Transformation (PAT 2005),
  Copenhagen, Denmark, June 6-10, 2005.
• The APPSEM-II Workshop on the Krivine and Zinc Abstract Machines (KAZAM),
  Birmingham, UK, May 17, 2005.
• The Twenty-first Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics (MFPS XXI)
  and its local-arrangement web page,
  Birmingham, UK, May 18-21, 2005.
• The 10th Estonian Winter School in Computer Science (EWSCS'05).
• The Strategic Research Workshop on Unconventional Programming Paradigms (UPP 2004).
• The 16th International Workshop on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL'04).
• The 2004 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation (PEPM 2004).
• The Sixth Symposium on Practical Applications of Declarative Languages (PADL 2004).
• The Fourth International Workshop on Reduction Strategies in Rewriting and Programming (WRS 2004).
• The Second APPSEM Workshop on Normalization by Evaluation (NBE 2004).
• The Fourth Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications (LDTA 2004).
• The Fourth ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Continuations (CW 2004), with pictures.
• Le colloque scientifique en l'honneur de Jean-François Perrot.

Miscellany:

• The pi-lambda seminar.
• Binaries (ah, nature).
• The HOSC special issue dedicated to Christopher Strachey (Free Online Sample Copy).
• APPSEM I and APPSEM II.
• The Revised5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R5RS).
• Chez Scheme.
• DrScheme.
• Standard ML of New Jersey.
• The O'Caml language.
• Captain Abstraction.
• Alan Perlis's Epigrams in Programming.
• Richard P. Feynman about evaluation committees.

• C. Lee Giles and Isaac G. Councill's article
  Who gets acknowledged: Measuring scientific contributions through automatic acknowledgment indexing
  in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
  101(51) pp. 17599-17604, December 21, 2004.
• Declan Butler's article about it,
  Acknowledgements hit the limelight,
  in Nature, Vol. 432, December 16, 2004.

About acknowledgment indexing:

If commenting someone else's work starts to be worth some credit,
it will encourage people to comment each other's work some more,
which will mechanically lead to better results
and, in all likelihood, to a better world.

Spinoffs:

• Declan Butler's article Frenchman is most thanked computer scientist,
  in Nature, Vol. 432, p. 790, December 16, 2004; doi:10.1038/432790b
• "Thanks God the French exist."
  Woody Allen, Hollywood Ending

Some amusing acknowledgments:

• "First of all, I would like to express to my editor the thanks that he deserves."
  Samuel R. Delany (to the best of my memory)
• "I wish to extend thanks to my mother and my father
  who made this show possible.
  I wish to extend thanks to my five children
  who made it necessary."
  Victor Borge.
• "Thanks is due to [...] and especially to Caitlin Blasdell, without whom, etc."
  Walter Jon Williams, The Praxis
• "Lastly, I acknowledge Michael A. Burstein for no particular reason."
  Timothy P. Szczesuil