Dr. Ruben Martins

Assistant Professor

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Biography

Ruben received his Ph.D. honors from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal in 2013. He served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, UK from 2014 to 2015, and at the University of Texas at Austin from 2015 to 2017. He has published in top-tier venues including POPL, PLDI, FSE, SAT, and CP, and won a distinguished paper award at PLDI in 2018 for his work on program synthesis. Additionally, Ruben developed award-winning constraint solvers and is the main developer of Open-WBO, an open-source Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) solver that has won gold medals in MaxSAT competitions. His work with Open-WBO includes applications that solve real-world discrete optimization problems, such as finding the optimal seating arrangement for his own wedding. His research interests lie at the intersection of constraint programming, program synthesis, analysis, and verification, with a recent focus on using programming synthesis to improve programmer productivity and automate data science-related tasks.

Research Interests

Experience

Assistant Research Professor

— Present

Carnegie Mellon University • Pittsburgh, PA

Director of the Master’s Program

Courses

15639 - Spring, 2026 15690 - Spring, 2026 15689 - Spring, 2026 15698 - Spring, 2026 15697 - Spring, 2026 15639 - Fall, 2025 15604 - Fall, 2025 15697 - Fall, 2025 15689 - Fall, 2025 15816 - Fall, 2025 15698 - Fall, 2025 15698 - Summer, 2025 15697 - Summer, 2025 15691 - Summer, 2025 15689 - Spring, 2025 15639 - Spring, 2025 15690 - Spring, 2025 15698 - Spring, 2025 15697 - Spring, 2025 15697 - Fall, 2024 15689 - Fall, 2024 15639 - Fall, 2024 15604 - Fall, 2024 15698 - Fall, 2024 15614 - Spring, 2024 15414 - Spring, 2024

Requirements for Carnegie Mellon University

Doctorate Program
Requirements
GPA Requirement
Required:3.5
GRE General
Verbal
Required:158
Quantitative
Required:149
Analytical Writing
Required:4
Overall
Required:4
Prerequisites
Bachelor's degree in Psychology or related field Research experience/publications
Application Checklist
  • Online application
  • Statement of Purpose
  • Three letters of recommendation
  • Transcripts
  • GRE scores (optional but reported in profile)
  • English Proficiency (TOEFL/IELTS/Duolingo)
Specialization Notes

Admission is extremely competitive with no strict GPA cut-offs; holistic review is used.