Professor Dr. Martin Odersky

Biography

Martin Odersky is a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he leads the programming research group. His research interests span both fundamental and applied aspects of programming languages, focusing particularly on semantics, type systems, programming language design, and compiler construction. A notable aspect of his work is the integration of object-oriented and functional programming paradigms, underscored by his research thesis exploring the unified possibilities of these paradigms. Odersky was a co-designer of Java, particularly notable for his contributions to Java generics and as the original author of the javac reference compiler. Currently, he works on Scala, a programming language that combines object-oriented and functional programming concepts while remaining interoperable with Java and .NET. His career includes previous research positions at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and Yale University. He joined EPFL as a full professor in 1999 and has also served as an associate editor for the Journal of Functional Programming, chairing several prominent conferences in the field. Odersky's work has received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation as well as the European Commission.

Research Interests

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