[Pl-seminar] Seminar: Alejandro Russo on Sensitivity by Parametricity

[Cameron Moy]

Where: WVH 366
When: Monday, August 19 (1:00pm-2:00pm)
Speaker: Alejandro Russo, Chalmers University of Technology / Göteborg
University
Title: Sensitivity by Parametricity
Abstract:
The work of Fuzz has pioneered the use of functional programming languages
where types allow reasoning about the sensitivity of programs. Fuzz and
subsequent work (e.g., DFuzz and Duet) use advanced technical devices like
linear types, modal types, and partial evaluation. These features usually
require the design of a new programming language from scratch ‒ a major
task on its own! While these features are part of the classical toolbox of
programming languages, they might result unfamiliar to non-programming
language experts. In this work, we propose to take a different direction.
We present the novel idea of applying parametricity, i.e., a well-known
abstract uniformity property enjoyed by polymorphic functions, to compute
the sensitivity of functions. A direct consequence of our result is that
calculating the sensitivity of functions can be reduced to simply
type-checking in a programming language with support for polymorphism.
Although other work proposed the use of polymorphism for calculating
sensitivity in the past, unfortunately, we found that their primitives are
unsound. We formalize our main result in a calculus, prove its soundness,
and implement a software library in the programming language Haskell ‒
where we reason about the sensitivity of classical examples. We also show
that thanks to type-inference, our approach supports a limited form of
sensitivity inference. Our library is implemented in 900 lines of code (
https://github.com/dpella/spar/). This work will be presented at OOPSLA
2024.

Bio:
Alejandro Russo is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology /
Göteborg University working on the intersection of functional languages,
security, privacy, and systems. His research ranges from foundational
aspects of security to practical ones. Prof. Russo worked at prestigious
research institutions like Stanford University, where he was appointed
visiting associate professor back in 2013, and 2014-2015. He is also the
recipient of ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential Paper Award at ICFP 2022, and a
distinguished paper at ACM SIGPLAN POPL 2019. Alejandro is also the CEO/CTO
and co-founder of DPella AB (https://www.dpella.io/), a company that uses
Haskell and PL-technology to deliver correct-by-construction Differential
Privacy solutions. He has recently obtained an (AMBA, AACSB, EQUIS
accredited) executive MBA degree from School of Business, Economics and
Law, Göteborg University.
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