I’m a PhD student at DIKU, the computer science department at the University of Copenhagen. I study programming languages/compilers and have spent most of my PhD working on Futhark, a statically-typed functional array programming language. I especially like “applied theory”, which I think of as practical, real-world systems that are backed by robust/formal models.

In January 2025 I’ll be starting as a postdoc in Klaus von Gleissenthall’s PL security group at VU Amsterdam.

Research

In Progress

1. Mechanical Proofs in an Array-Combinator Language. Nikolaj Hey Hinnerskov, Robert Schenck, Cosmin Oancea. WIP presented at ARRAY 24.

Published

2. AUTOMAP: Inferring Rank-Polymorphic Function Applications with Integer Linear Programming. Robert Schenck, Nikolaj Hey Hinnerskov, Troels Henriksen, Magnus Madsen, Martin Elsman. OOPSLA 24 (pdf)

3. AD for an Array Language with Nested Parallelism. Robert Schenck, Ola Rønning, Troels Henriksen, Cosmin Oancea. SC 22 (pdf, bib, artifact)

4. Combinatory Adjoints and Differentiation. Martin Elsman, Fritz Henglein, Robin Kaarsgaard, Mikkel K. Mathiesen, and Robert Schenck. MSFP 22 (pdf)

Education

• University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen, Denmark)
  PhD Computer Science (expected 2024)

• Max Planck Research School for Computer Science (Saarbrücken, Germany)
  Thesis: Sum types in Futhark (pdf)
  MSc Computer Science (2020)

• Brown University (Providence, RI)
  BA Physics (2015)

Talks

• AUTOMAP: Inferring Rank-Polymorphic Function Applications with Integer Linear Programming:
  • Talk at OOPSLA 24 (slides).
  • Invited talk at IMDEA (slides).
  • Extended abstract talk at ARRAY 24 (slides).
• AD for an Array Language with Nested Parallelism. SC 22 (slides)

Writing

• AUTOMAP: How to do NumPy-style Broadcasting in Futhark (but better)

Teaching

I was a teaching assistant in serveral courses at the University of Copenhagen:

• Advanced Programming (2018, 2020, 2024)
• Data Parallel Programming (2021)

I also co-supervised (with Fritz Henglein) a couple of MSc theses:

• Trine Dag Randløv: Toward a Monadic Functional Machine Model for Computability and Complexity Theory: Finite and Pushdown Automata (2023)

• Ulrik Elmelund Petersen and Einar Rasmussen: Design and Implementation of a Compiler for Fréchet (2022)

Extras

• I’m an FAA-licensed VFR and IFR airplane pilot.

• I have dual US-German citizenship.