SEAS graduate student awarded Facebook Fellowship

Facebook certainly “likes” Gregory Malecha, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The social media giant awarded Malecha a 2012-13 Facebook Fellowship. As a fellow, he will enjoy fully paid tuition and fees for the academic year. He will also receive a $30,000 stipend, money towards conference travel and a personal computer, and have an opportunity to apply for a paid summer internship at Facebook.

Malecha, who is advised by Greg Morrisett, Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science at SEAS, works on program verification and topics in high-level programming languages.

He became interested in compiler and programming language technology while an undergraduate at Rice University, where he worked on multistage programming.

He believes that programming language technology has the potential to radically improve both the efficiency and the trustworthiness of modern software.

“The core of my research is addressing the trustworthiness of software,” Malecha wrote in his fellowship application. “The complexity of systems like Linux and language run-times like Java has dwarfed even the substantial complexity of physical projects like bridges, skyscrapers and utility systems. Understanding even small parts of these software (and hardware) systems is becoming increasingly difficult. This makes bugs the norm, exposing users and companies to bad experiences and security breaches.”