Aaron Bohannon

Ph.D. Student
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania

Email

bohannon|@|cis|.|upenn|.|edu

Office

Levine/GRW 565

Mailing Address

CIS Dept., Levine 302
3330 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA  19104

Academic Interests

Computer software is notoriously buggy. By designing type systems and domain-specific languages, I aim to make it easier to write reliable software. In conjunction with this, I am interested in techniques for using proof assistants to verify properties of our languages, compilers, and other critical system tools.

Research

I am currently working on the design of a language for writing secure web applications and browser extensions. I have written a report on the security of web mashups. Slides for the report are available in PowerPoint or PDF format, although the graphical overlay sequences only work in the PowerPoint format.

I am involved in the POPLmark project at Penn and am interested in comparing techniques for representing inductive data types with binding in the Coq proof assistant.

I have worked on extending the results from the Harmony project to bi-directional transformations on relational data and string data.

My advisor is Benjamin Pierce.

Publications

• Boomerang: Resourceful Lenses for String Data. Aaron Bohannon, J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, Alexandre Pilkiewicz, and Alan Schmitt. In ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), 2008.
• Nominal Reasoning Techniques in Coq. Brian Aydemir, Aaron Bohannon, and Stephanie Weirich. In International Workshop on Logical Frameworks and Meta-Languages: Theory and Practice (LFMTP), 2006.
• Relational Lenses: A Language for Updateable Views. Aaron Bohannon, Jeffrey A. Vaughan, and Benjamin C. Pierce. In Principles of Database Systems (PODS), 2006.
• Mechanized Metatheory for the Masses: The POPLmark Challenge. Brian E. Aydemir, Aaron Bohannon, Matthew Fairbairn, J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, Peter Sewell, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Geoffrey Washburn, Stephanie Weirich, and Steve Zdancewic. In 18th International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics (TPHOLs), 2006.

Academic History

• Master of Science in Computer Science, University of Oregon, 2004 (Eugene, OR)
  • Advisor: Zena Ariola
  • Thesis: Sequent Calculus and Abstract Machines
• Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, Northwestern University, 2001 (Evanston, IL)
• Bachelor of Music in Music Theory, Northwestern University, 2001 (Evanston, IL)

In 1996 I graduated from high school in Emmett, Idaho. I spent two years at Albertson College of Idaho before transferring to Northwestern University in 1998.