Experts in programming languages and programming systems are meeting in New Orleans from Sunday, January 19, to Saturday, January 25, for the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL). Among the attendees are several Facebook researchers and engineers looking to engage with the academic community and discuss topics in programming languages. At the conference social hour today, Facebook Software Engineering Manager Satish Chandra is announcing a new research award opportunity in probability and programming. Read more about the opportunity below.

In our commitment to increasing diversity in systems and networking, Facebook is also organizing and sponsoring a W@POPL Dinner on Thursday, January 23. With this event, we hope to foster a community among women in programming languages, including faculty, postdocs, and students. “This is the first W@POPL dinner ever, and we’re looking forward to networking with women academics in this space,” says Sharon Ayalde, Facebook Research Program Manager and one of the organizers of the dinner. For those at POPL interested in attending, you can register as part of your POPL registration.

New research award opportunity

At POPL 2019, we launched the Probability and Programming research awards, with the goal of receiving proposals from academia that addressed fundamental problems at the intersection of machine learning, programming languages, and software engineering. “With 66 proposals submitted, it was a challenge to select just 10 winners,” says Erik Meijer, Engineering Director at Facebook.

Following the success of the 2019 Probability and Programming request for proposals, we’re back at POPL announcing the launch of the 2020 Probability and Programming RFP. This year, we’re interested in research proposals that are focused on a broader range of topics at the intersection of machine learning, programming languages, statistics, and software engineering.

These topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Differentiable programming
• Probabilistic programming
• Programming tools built using “big code”
• Applications of machine learning to troubleshoot and optimize systems
• Robustness and uncertainty management for ML models

The deadline to apply to this call for proposals is Wednesday, March 4, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. AOE. To apply and for more information regarding application requirements, eligibility, timing, and more, visit the Probability and Programming RFP page.

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To view our currently open research awards and to subscribe to our email list, visit our Research Awards page.