Dr. Christian Kästner

Biography

Christian Kästner is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Software Engineering Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is a faculty member of the School of Computer Science. His research focuses on the limits of modularity and the complexities introduced by variability in software systems. Kästner's work aims to develop mechanisms, languages, and tools to implement variability in a disciplined manner, addressing the imperfect modularity and understanding the interactions between features, as well as interoperability issues. He is dedicated to detecting errors, assisting in nonmodular changes, and enhancing program comprehension in software systems that typically exhibit a high degree of variability. He has developed approaches for parsing, type checking, and compiling configurations, particularly in the context of the Linux kernel through the TypeChef project.

Research Interests

Experience