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

[Amal Ahmed]

Hi everyone, 

A quick reminder that we have Alejandro Russo visiting today at giving a talk at 1pm. 

Best,
Amal

> On Aug 14, 2024, at 12:02 PM, Cameron Moy <camoy at cs.umd.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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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