Gan Shen

About

Hi, I'm Gan 👋. I'm an Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services in the Automated Reasoning Group.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from UC Santa Cruz, where I was advised by Lindsey Kuper. I was a member of the CASL group and theLSD Lab. My research lies in programming languages and formal methods, focusing on their applications to building reliable software systems.

Specifically, I work on choreographic programming, a paradigm for programming distributed systems in which the entire system is expressed as a single program and then projected into separate programs for each node. In this way, interactions between nodes are manifest and guaranteed to be deadlock-free. We developed HasChor, an embedded domain-specific language in Haskell for choreographic programming, to experiment with language design and build practical distributed systems.

Publications

• Freer arrows and why you need them in Haskell
  Grant VanDomelen, Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper, Yao Li
  Haskell Symposium 2025

• Efficient, Portable, Census-Polymorphic Choreographic Programming
  Mako Bates, Shun Kashiwa, Syed Jafri, Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper, Joseph P. Near
  PLDI 2025

• 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

• Parameters extraction for equivalent circuit model based on artificial intelligence
  Linchun Liu, Zhimin Guan, Gan Shen, Peng Zhao, Gaofeng Wang
  ICCEM 2019

Teaching

At UC Santa Cruz, as a teaching assistant

• Foundations of Programming Languages, Spring 2026, Fall 2024, Spring 2022
• Parallel and Concurrent Programming, Spring 2021
• Fundmentals of Compiler Design I, Winter 2020

Services

• Artifact Evaluation Committee, ICFP 2026
• Reviewer, JFP
• Sub-reviewer, OOPSLA 2025, POPL 2022

I co-organized the LSD Seminar from Fall 2023 to Spring 2025.

Personal

I'm from Suzhou, China, a beautiful city with over 2500 years of history and rich culture heritage, renowned for its classical Chinese gardens.

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

In my free time, I enjoy photography, rock climbing, and video games. I also like playing table tennis. I'm a member of Mindful Peace International.