PLAIT Lab Reading Group

The PLAIT Lab Reading Group is a casual meeting that we have once a week, ideally over lunch. We usually either discuss a recently published paper or talk about our own works in progress.

Summer 2021

During this term, we focused on two types of readings we don’t usually discuss in the reading group:

  1. Programming Languages Prelim readings from the UC Berkeley list of recommended readings to prepare for the PhD preliminary examination in programming languages
  2. Education readings
Date Leader Reading/Activity Extra Links
Aug. 24 TBD TBD  
Aug. 17 PLAIT Lab Undergrads Present work  
Aug. 10 TBD TBD  
Aug. 3 Justin PLP: Programming parallel algorithms  
Jul. 27 Sarah E: Teaching to and through cultural diversity  
Jul. 20 Gabriel E: ChocoPy  
Jul. 13 Rolando Dynamic dependency analysis of ordinary programs  
Jul. 6 Parker Engineering the Servo web browser engine using Rust  
Jun. 29 Justin PLP: Algorithm = Logic + Control  
Jun. 22 Gabriel PLP: Mirrors  
Jun. 15 Sarah E: (1) Increased structure and active learning reduce the achievement gap in introductory biology + (2) Halving fail rates using peer instruction Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics
Jun. 8 Justin PLP: Hints on programming-language design  
Jun. 1   Extended Memorial Day weekend  
May 25 Sarah Summer planning  

Spring 2021

Date Leader Reading/Activity Extra Links
May 4 Rolando Pin  
Apr. 27 Gabriel Debug information validation for optimized code  
Apr. 20 Justin REPLica  
Apr. 13 Lisa WIP: Brainstorming for MS project  
Apr. 6 Gabriel Feedback-driven semi-supervised synthesis of program transformations  
Mar. 30 Rolando The Data Calculator  
Mar. 23   Spring recess  
Mar. 16 Gabriel Enabling data-driven API design with community usage data  
Mar. 9 Justin WIP: How statically-typed functional programmers author code  
Mar. 2 Lisa Engineering the software for understanding climate change Video presentation
Feb. 23 Sarah Formalizing visualization design knowledge as constraints Project page
Feb. 16 Gabriel WIP: The state of the art in breaking changes How to break an API
Feb. 9 Rolando WIP: Understanding logging in machine learning in practice Software engineering for machine learning
Feb. 2 Justin The role of working memory in program tracing  
Jan. 26 All Discuss lab name, pick readings for semester  

Fall 2020

Date Leader Reading/Activity Extra Links
Dec. 14   Happy finals week!  
Dec. 7 Sarah, Lisa Increasing the transparency of research papers with explorable multiverse analyses  
Nov. 30 Gabriel Putting the semantics into semantic versioning  
Nov. 23 Jack Can advanced type systems be usable? Michael’s dissertation
Nov. 16   OOPSLA attendance week! :-)  
Nov. 9 Justin egg  
Nov. 2 Sarah Just-in-time learning for bottom-up enumerative synthesis  
Oct. 26 Gabriel Verifying and improving Halide’s term rewriting system with program synthesis  
Oct. 19 Sarah Chat about conference culture, the space of conferences relevant to our work (and what work interests them)  
Oct. 12 Justin Aligning development tools with the way programmers think about code changes  
Oct. 5 All Reading group planning