Gan Shen

About

Hi, I'm a 5th-year PhD candidate in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Cruz. I'm advised by Prof. Lindsey Kuper and a member of the LSD lab. My research lies in programming languages, with a focus on their applications in building software that is elegant, correct, and efficient (in this order!).

Specifically, I work on choreographic programming, a programming paradigm that allows one to write a single program that describes the complete behavior of a distributed system and then compiles it to individual programs run on each node. In this way, interactions between nodes are manifest and guaranteed deadlock-free, an essential step toward understandable and reliable distributed systems. We've been developing HasChor, a Haskell library for choreographic programming, to experiment with language design and create real-world distributed systems.

Research

• Toward Verified Library-Level Choreographic Programming with Algebraic Effects
  Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper
  CP 2024

• HasChor: Functional Choreographic Programming for All (Functional Pearl)
  Gan Shen, Shun Kashiwa, Lindsey Kuper
  ICFP 2023    (Distinguished Paper Award)

• Verified Causal Broadcast with Liquid Haskell
  Patrick Redmond, Gan Shen, Niki Vazou, Lindsey Kuper
  IFL 2022

• Toward Hole-Driven Development with Liquid Haskell
  Patrick Redmond, Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper
  HATRA 2021

• Toward SMT-Based Refinement Types in Agda
  Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper
  HATRA 2021

Teaching

At UCSC, as a teaching assistant:

• Foundations of Programming Languages
  Spring 2022

• Parallel and Concurrent Programming
  Spring 2021

• Fundmentals of Compiler Design I
  Winter 2020

Personal

• I'm from Suzhou, China, a beautiful city with 2500 years of history and known for its classical gardens.

• My Chinese name is 沈赣. My given name 赣 (Gan) is a reference to the Jiangxi province of China, my mother's hometown.