Past Members, Projects and Theses

Here are some pointers to some of our areas of work in the past:

	Reducing the amount of memory functional programs require. This includes profiling mechanisms, compiler technology for heap and code compression, and garbage collection techniques.
	Applying functional languages to real programming tasks. Apart from the FLARE project, we have also looked at extensions and generalisations of functional programming, foreign language interfacing, parallelisation, and benchmarking of data structures.
	Using transformation to trace computations, to improve program efficiency, and to prove properties about programs. The STARSHIP system was one product of this research aimed at proof techniques, and the ART project looked specifically at tracing. We also did some work on partial evaluation and lazy specialisation.

Past members and theses

Not all theses are available on-line. Printed copies of York theses are available at cost from the Computer Science librarian, Ian Patrick. Mail ilp at cs.york.ac.uk quoting the author and the YCST number.

• Adam Bakewell's PhD thesis, An Operational Theory of Relative Space Efficiency (YCST 2002/08) presents a new way to define and compare the space usage of different program evaluation strategies; Adam also worked on minimal common generalisation of functions and as a post-doc on a safe pointer-programming system based on graph transformation.
• Thorsten Brehm was a visiting Diploma student from Aachen, working on the ART project, in particular developing new styles of interaction with the stored trace.
• Dave Cattrall's DPhil thesis, The Design and Implementation of a Relational Programming System (YCST93/01), describes Drusilla, a language based on relations rather than functions, and an implementation of it that infers suitable representions of relations.
• Nathan Charles's DPhil thesis, Data Model Refinement, Generic Profiling, and Functional Programming (YCST 2001/11), shows how to express refinement of data models using a combinator library, and applies this technique to design improved profiling tools.
• Iain Checkland's DPhil thesis is Speculative Concurrent Evaluation in a Lazy Functional Language (YCST95/01).
• Olaf Chitil worked as a post-doctoral researcher on the Advanced Redex Trails project contributing to the Hat tracer, and also had interests in pretty-printing, and type debugging.
• Mike Firth's DPhil thesis, A Fold/Unfold Transformation System for a Non-Strict Language (YCST90/09), describes the design and implementation of the STARSHIP system.
• Sandra Foubister's DPhil thesis is Graphical Application and Visualisation of Lazy Functional Computation (YCST95/10).
• Philip Hassall worked on profile-directed combination of interpreted and compiled code.
• Tatsuru Matsushita's DPhil thesis, Expressive Power of Declarative Programming Languages (YCST-99/03), investigates the expressive power of restricted classes of logic and functional programs, and some connections between them.
• Graeme Moss's DPhil thesis, Benchmarking Purely Functional Data Structures (YCST-2000-01), formulates a new model for the use of purely functional abstract data types, and develops the Auburn toolkit for automatic inductive benchmarking of competing data structures.
• Rob Noble's DPhil thesis, Lazy Functional Components for Graphical User Interfaces (YCST96/05), describes a concurrent-process extension of a lazy functional language and applies it to graphical interaction, including a functional screen manager.
• John Quirke's MPhil thesis is A functional implementation of the Hopcroft Tarjan graph planarity algorithm.
• Niklas Rojemo was the original author of the nhc compiler, and a visiting post-doctoral researcher from Gothenburg; he worked mainly on space efficiency including post-mortem and two-pass heap profiling.
• Jan Sparud was a post-doctoral researcher who did the original implementation of redex-trail tracing.
• Michael Thyer's DPhil Thesis, Lazy Specialization (YCST 2003/04), investigates a scheme to combine the benefits of lazy evaluation and program specialisation.
• Ian Toyn is still at York. His DPhil thesis, Exploratory Environments for Functional Programming (YCST87/02), describes two programming environments, Fly and Glide, including their facilities for debugging and handling multiple definitions.
• David Wakeling's DPhil thesis, Linearity and Laziness (YCST90/07), points out the dichotomy between guaranteeing single-use (linearity) and yet hoping for term-sharing (laziness). He also worked as a post-doc on the FLARE project, particularly on profiling systems. After moving to Exeter, he collaborated in our project with Canon to miniaturise functional programs.
• Malcolm Wallace is still at York. His DPhil Thesis Functional Languages and Embedded Systems, (YCST95/04) describes four extensions of a functional programming system (I/O registers, communicating processes, interrupt handling and incremental garnage collection) and two case studies of embedded applications.

Page last updated 21 July 2005