William Blair
17 Surrey St
Brighton, M.A. 02135 U.S.A.
Phone: 617-870-8932
email: wdblair@cs.bu.edu
url: http://cs-people.bu.edu/wdblair
Current position
Ph.D. Student, Boston University
Research Interests
I am interested in investigating how programmers can leverage expressive type systems
to build confidence in software correctness. I currently explore this idea in my PhD studies with ATS, a statically typed functional language that features both dependent and linear types. I have written verified firmware for Arduino boards in ATS and improved the
language’s type checker to use SMT solvers which allows programmers to automatically
verify code that previously required manual proof.
For my thesis, I plan on using Session Types in ATS as a way of verifying correctness and
safety properties of communicating processes in Cyber-Physical Systems. The mission
critical requirements of such systems makes ensuring correct and predictable communication between application components an important, yet difficult task. Session Types
allow communication over channels to be specified using program types. I believe embedding this information into the type system offers an attractive alternative to just run-time
analysis which can be difficult to implement with systems that are tightly coupled with
the physical world.
Education
2014-present
2012-2014
2008-2012
PhD in Computer Science, Boston University
MS in Computer Science, Boston University
Project: Dependent Types for Real Time Constraints
Advisor: Hongwei Xi
BA in Computer Science, Boston University
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Research
Works in Progress
2015
William Blair, Hongwei Xi. ”Implementing Hybrid Systems with Dependent Types”
Presentations
2015
2015
2015
2014
William Blair, Hongwei Xi ”Using a Portfolio of SMT Solvers in Software Development”
NEPLS Fall at Tufts University
William Blair, Hongwei Xi ”Dependent Types for Real Time Constraints”
ML Workshop at ICFP 2015
William Blair, Hongwei Xi ”Integrating SMT into Software Development””
NEPLS Spring at Wesleyan University Wesleyan University
William Blair, “Debugging with Types in ATS”
Boston Haskell Meetup
Teaching
Fall 2014
Spring 2015
Spring 2014
TF For CS111 Introduction to Computer Science
Assisted students through a breadth first introduction to Computer Science that covers
programming in Functional, Imperative, and Object Oriented paradigms. Other topics
such as Computer Organization, Assembly Programming, and Computational Complexity
were briefly introduced as well. The class was adapted from the ”CS For All’ class developed at Harvey Mudd University. My role included leading discussion sections, grading,
and holding office hours.
TF for CS211 Object Oriented Programming
Assisted students with learning Objective C and writing applications for iOS devices. Students first built familiarity with the iOS environment by gradually constructing a Tweeting App in iOS, and then developed original apps on there own.
Professional Experience
2015
2009-2014
Software Engineer Intern in LonoCloud group at ViaSat
Assisted in improving a Standard Cloud Library. Using this library, application components for distributed systems can be developed against a standard interface instead of
specific cloud services or infrastructure. This work involved concurrent programming in
Clojure with the core.async library.
Software Engineer Intern at 829 Studios LLC
Developed web applications in PHP and Python. The largest project includes the Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association’s (LIMA) front end web site along with their customer management and billing system.
Designed and Implemented OfferedLocal, a Ruby on Rails application that allows businesses to publish location based offers across Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare.
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2013
2009-2010
Software Engineer Intern at ViaSat
Reverse engineered Android and iOS applications. Developed prototypes where a manin-the-middle server could alter the behavior of applications that relied on Javascript.
Technician at Electronics Design Facility
Assisted in the design and layout of circuit boards for Physics Research Groups. Wrote
firmware for a medical prototype as a part of the FLARE laser project at Beth Israel Hospital. The device used microcontrollers to regulate the power and temperature of lasers.
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