About
I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. I received a BA in Computer Science and Music from Swarthmore College in May 2020, where I was advised by Zachary Palmer.
Some things in Computer Science that fascinate me are Programming Languages, Automata Theory, and the idea of Undecidability. At Swarthmore, I worked on developing the theory and implementation of Plume, a family of program analyses for functional programs that supports not only fixed-size list-based context models, but also a Set-based context model, where control flows are equated with the same set of call sites on the program stack. From experimentation on both types of context models in various program analyses, we found that the set-based model is tractable and expressive on representative functional programs for both forward- and demand-driven functional analyses.
Research
Projects
On the side, I am exploring Linear Conjunctive Languages and their applications to Program Analyses. As a language class, the Linear Conjunctive Languages are incomparable to the Context Free Languages. Their significance lies in that they recognize languages such as the interleaving of Dyck Languages (the language of matched parentheses), allowing the program analysis problem of tracking control and data flow to be mapped onto a LCL reachability problem. While this implies that LCL reachability is undecidable, LCL reachability approximation algorithms allow for a new approach for creating more precise Program Analyses.
Publications
- A Set-Based Context Model for Program Analysis, November 2020. Leandro Fachinetti, Zachary Palmer, Scott F. Smith, Ke Wu, Ayaka Yorihiro. Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS). [PDF]
Teaching Experiences
Swarthmore College
- Teaching Assistant - CS73: Programming Languages [S20]
- Teaching Assistant - CS46: Theory of Computation [S20]
- Student Mentor - CS21: Introduction to Computer Science [F18]
Misc
Fun Facts
- Outside CS, I am a big fan of many things: dogs, the viola, board games, baking, memes, the J-POP band Official HIGE DANdism, wonderful comedy shows Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, and more!
- My undergrad thesis in Music was written about Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a composer contemporary of Beethoven, and his role in cultivating the improvisatory Fantasie and Potpourri musical genres. You can read it here.
- I was on the Varsity Tennis team for all four years of my High School career, and somehow this surprised all of my friends in College.
- I am one of those people who have perfect pitch, and will tell you that I have perfect pitch whenever I get a chance to do so.
- My first name can be pronounced like either "eye-AH-ka" or "A-ya-ka", and a nice work-around in pronouncing my last name is to say "You're a hero" fast.
- If you take the first letter off of my last name, it becomes an element of a nonregular language - the language of palindromes!
Musings and Advice
Not quite sure what this section is, but I wrote some things down that may or may not be helpful...