Travel: Midwest Programming Languages Summit 2026--2028

This grant supports the Midwest Programming Languages Summit (MWPLS), an annual research workshop that brings together programming language and software verification faculty, post-doctoral fellows, students, and industrial scientists from the greater Midwest. The project's novelty is in serving as a forum for regional researchers to share in-progress ideas and to receive timely feedback to influence subsequent work. This is in contrast to more formal venues, such as those organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which require more complete and more formally presented work. The project's broader significance and importance is to provide networking opportunities for researchers to develop collaborations across organizations and for students to develop connections that will direct their future careers. The workshops will also bring faculty from teaching-focused institutions together with industrial and university researchers, helping both new ideas to flow into classroom settings and classroom experience to inform future research. The events supported by this grant will include presentations on specific research projects as well as a poster session and informal discussions. These talks and posters will span a variety of topics in programming languages and software verification research, including: type systems and program logics; program synthesis and its applications; high-performance compiler implementation for parallel and multi-core hardware; tools and techniques for software engineering; and applications of programming language technology to settings from human-computer interaction to quantum computing. This grant will provide travel support for students who might otherwise be unable to participate or present at the events. This will strengthen the events for all participants, as it will broaden both the research presented and the possible networking opportunities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.