Email: cdstanford  •  ucdavis  •  edu

Website: web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~cdstanford

Primary Research Areas: Programming Languages, Systems, Formal Methods

PDF version

Education

• University of Pennsylvania

  PhD, computer science, 2022. Advisor: Rajeev Alur.

• Brown University

  ScB, mathematics and computer science, 2016.

Employment

• UC Davis

  Assistant professor, computer science, 2023–present.

• UC San Diego

  Postdoctoral researcher, 2022–2023.

• Microsoft, Research in Software Engineering Group (RiSE).

  Research intern, Summer 2020.

• Amazon Web Services, Automated Reasoning Group (ARG).

  Research intern, Summer 2019.

Funding Awarded

1. NSF CCF #2327338, 2023–2027. Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Refine the Gap: Establishing Safety for Modern Foreign Function Interfaces. $1,200,000 (Total), $300,000 (UC Davis), $26,000 (REU supplements).

2. NSF CCF #2403762, 2024–2027. EAGER: Proof-Carrying Code Completions. $300,000 (UC Davis).

Awards and Honors

• Distinguished Paper Award at ETAPS/ESOP 2026 for Auditing Rust Crates Effectively (with L. Zoghbi, D. Thien, R. Jhala, and D. Stefan).

• Student Awards: In 2026, Ethan Ng won the CSE Outstanding Senior Award and George Berdovskiy won a Department Citation.

• Distinguished Reviewer at OOPSLA 2025 (award given to 7/100 PC members).

Affiliations

• Graduate Group in Computer Science

• Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics

• Electrical Engineering Graduate Program

• UC Davis DataLab

Conference & Journal Papers

1. GlucOS: Security, Correctness, and Simplicity for Automated Insulin Delivery. Hari Venugopalan, Shreyas Madhav Ambattur Vijayanand, Caleb Stanford, Stephanie Crossen, Samuel T. King. Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), June 2026.

2. Auditing Rust Crates Effectively. Lydia Zoghbi, David Thien, Ranjit Jhala, Deian Stefan, and Caleb Stanford. Distinguished paper. European Symposium on Programming (ESOP), part of the International Joint Conferences On Theory and Practice of Software, April 2026.

3. Cargo Sherlock: An SMT-Based Checker for Software Trust Costs. Muhammad Hassnain, Anirudh Basu, Ethan Ng, Caleb Stanford. Formal Methods in Software Engineering (FormaliSE), April 2026.

4. Stream Types. Joseph W. Cutler, Christopher Watson, Emeka Nkurumeh, Phillip Hilliard, Harrison Goldstein, Caleb Stanford, and Benjamin Pierce. Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), June 2024.

5. Incremental Dead State Detection in Logarithmic Time. Caleb Stanford and Margus Veanes. Computer-Aided Verification (CAV), July 2023.

6. A Robust Theory of Series-Parallel Graphs. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Caleb Stanford, and Christopher Watson. Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), January 2023.

7. Stream Processing with Dependency-Guided Synchronization. Equal contribution (first 3 authors): Konstantinos Kallas, Filip Niksic, Caleb Stanford, and Rajeev Alur. Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), February 2022.

8. Correctness in Stream Processing: Challenges and Opportunities. Caleb Stanford, Konstantinos Kallas, and Rajeev Alur. Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR), January 2022.

9. Symbolic Boolean Derivatives for Efficiently Solving Extended Regular Expression Constraints. Caleb Stanford, Margus Veanes, and Nikolaj Bjørner. Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), June 2021.

10. DiffStream: Differential Output Testing for Stream Processing Programs. Equal contribution (first 3 authors): Konstantinos Kallas, Filip Niksic, Caleb Stanford, and Rajeev Alur. Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), November 2020.

11. Streamable Regular Transductions. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Dana Fisman, Konstantinos Mamouras, Mukund Raghothaman, and Caleb Stanford. Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), February 2020.

12. Data-Trace Types for Distributed Stream Processing Systems. Konstantinos Mamouras, Caleb Stanford, Rajeev Alur, Zachary Ives, and Val Tannen. Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), June 2019.

13. Modular Quantitative Monitoring. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Konstantinos Mamouras, and Caleb Stanford. Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), January 2019.

14. Automata-Based Stream Processing. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Konstantinos Mamouras, and Caleb Stanford. International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP), July 2017.

Workshop Papers

1. Coenobita: Static Capability Types for Side Effect Safety in Rust. George Berdovskiy, Caleb Stanford. International Workshop on Aliasing, Capabilities and Ownership (IWACO), co-located with OOPSLA/SPLASH, October 2026.

2. Counterexamples in Safe Rust. Muhammad Hassnain and Caleb Stanford. Human-Centric Software Engineering & Cyber Security (HCSE&CS), workshop co-located with Automated Software Engineering (ASEW), October 2024.

3. Vision Paper: Proof-Carrying Code Completions. Parnian Kamran, Premkumar Devanbu, and Caleb Stanford. Automated and Verifiable Software System Development (ASYDE), workshop co-located with Automated Software Engineering (ASEW), October 2024.

4. Zero-Cost Capabilities: Retrofitting Effect Safety in Rust. George Berdovskiy, Caleb Stanford (mentor). Student project for the POPL Student Research Competition (POPL-SRC), January 2024.

Books

1. Puzzle and Proof: A Decade of Problems from the Utah Math Olympiad. In alphabetical order: Samuel Dittmer, Hiram Golze, Grant Molnar, and Caleb Stanford. Series on Recreational Mathematics (CRC Press, 1st Edition), August 2024.

Dissertation

1. Safe Programming over Distributed Streams. Caleb Stanford. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, July 2022.

Invited Contributions

1. Synchronization Schemas. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Phillip Hilliard, Zachary Ives, Konstantinos Kallas, Konstantinos Mamouras, Filip Niksic, Caleb Stanford, Val Tannen, and Anton Xue. Invited contribution to Principles of Database Systems (PODS-Invited), June 2021.

2. Interfaces for Stream Processing Systems. In alphabetical order: Rajeev Alur, Konstantinos Mamouras, Caleb Stanford, and Val Tannen. Invited contribution to Principles of Modeling: Festschrift Symposium in honor of Edward A. Lee, October 2017.

Drafts

1. A Theory of Regular Expressions over Uninterpreted String Variables. Tiching Kao, Anish Ahuja, and Caleb Stanford. Draft under review.

2. FP4: Line-Rate, Holistic, Greybox Fuzz Testing for P4 Programs. Nofel Yaseen, Liangcheng Yu, Caleb Stanford, Ryan Beckett, and Vincent Liu. Draft under review.

Other Contributions

1. Mathematical Muffin Morsels: Nobody Wants A Small Piece. William Gasarch, Erik Metz, Jacob Prinz, and Daniel Smolyak. Book contribution (World Scientific), June 2020.

2. Context-Directed Reversals of Signed Permutations. In alphabetical order: Hannah Li, Jack Ramsey, Marion Scheepers, Haley Schilling, and Caleb Stanford. Outstanding presentation award for poster at the Joint Math Meetings (JMM), January 2016.

Teaching

• ECS 119: Data Processing Pipelines (Fall 2024, Fall 2025, Fall 2026), UC Davis. Course evaluations: 4.3/5 (overall), 4.5/5 (teaching), 4.3/5 (overall), 4.5/5 (teaching) (1=Poor, 2=Fair, 3=Satisfactory, 4=Very Good, 5=Excellent)

• ECS 189C: Software Correctness (Spring 2024, Winter 2026), Listed: Special Topics in Computer Science: Programming Languages and Compilers, UC Davis. Course evaluations: 4.7/5 (overall), 4.5/5 (teaching), 4.6/5 (overall), 4.6/5 (teaching) (1=Poor, 2=Fair, 3=Satisfactory, 4=Very Good, 5=Excellent)

• ECS 240: Programming Languages (Fall 2026), UC Davis.

• ECS 261: Program Verification (Spring 2025, Winter 2026, Winter 2027), UC Davis. Course evaluations: 4.5/5 (overall), 4.5/5 (teaching), 4.8/5 (overall), 4.8/5 (teaching) (1=Poor, 2=Fair, 3=Satisfactory, 4=Very Good, 5=Excellent)

• ECS 289C: Seminar in Programming Languages (Spring 2024), Listed: Special Topics in Programming Languages and Compilers, UC Davis. Course evaluations: 4.8/5 (overall), 4.9/5 (teaching) (1=Poor, 2=Fair, 3=Satisfactory, 4=Very Good, 5=Excellent)

• CIS 198: Rust Programming (Spring 2021), UPenn. Course evaluations: 2.9/4 (overall), 3.2/4 (teaching) (0=Poor, 1=Fair, 2=Good, 3=Very Good, 4=Excellent)

• Teaching Certificate from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), UPenn. Completed Spring 2021.

Students Mentored

• Jake Hamzawi, Masters, Fall 2026–present.

• Ian Miranda, Undergraduate, Spring 2026–present.

• Armaan Bhargava-Shah, Undergraduate, Spring 2026–present.

• Tiching Kao, PhD, Fall 2026–present. (Undergraduate/MS 2024-2026)

• Muhammad Hassnain, PhD, Fall 2023–present.

• Lucas Du, Masters, Winter 2025–Summer 2026. Next: CS PhD at Cornell.

• Enzuo Zhu, PhD, Fall 2024–Spring 2026.

• Jake Roggenbuck, Undergraduate, Fall 2023–Spring 2026. Next: SWE at Sunday Robotics.

• Ethan Ng, Undergraduate, Summer 2024–Spring 2026. CSE Outstanding Senior Award, 2026. Next: MSCS at UIUC.

• Timothy Paczynski, Masters, Fall 2025–Spring 2026.

• Anirudh Basu, Undergraduate, Summer 2024–Fall 2025. Next: CS PhD at UCSC.

• Anish Ahuja, Undergraduate, Winter 2024–Fall 2025. Next: CS PhD at NYU.

• George Berdovskiy, Undergraduate, Spring 2023–Fall 2025. CS Department Citation, 2026. Next: CS PhD at UT Austin.

• Audrey Gobaco, Undergraduate, Summer 2024–Spring 2025. Next: CS MS at UCSD.

• Parnian Kamran, PhD, Spring 2023–Spring 2025.

• Zeerak Babar, Masters, Fall 2023.

• Nicholas Pilotti, Undergraduate, Spring 2022. UPenn; Co-mentored with Li-yao Xia.

Thesis Committees

• Bisman Singh Anand, MS Committee, Fall 2026.

• Theodore Pan, QE Committee, Fall 2026.

• Muhammad Reza, MS Committee, Spring 2026.

• Jason Yoo, MS Committee, Spring 2026.

• Khai Vu, MS Committee, Spring 2026.

• Sanjana Mali, MS Committee, Spring 2026.

• Josh Hutton, MS Committee, Spring 2026.

• Shaokang Xie, QE Committee, Spring 2026.

• Hao-Nan Zhu, QE Committee, Fall 2025.

• Jicheng (Jeremy) Wang, MS Committee, Fall 2025.

• Srikkanth Ramachandran, QE Committee, Summer 2025.

• Yutong Wang, QE Committee, Spring 2025.

• Yifeng He, QE Committee, Spring 2025.

• Shaoor Munir, QE Committee, Spring 2025.

• Tarun Tiwari, MS Committee, Spring 2025.

• Shantanu Joshi, MS Committee, Winter 2025.

• Claudio Spiess, QE Committee, Fall 2024.

• Hari Venugopalan, QE Committee, Fall 2024.

• Dolores Miao, QE Committee, Fall 2024.

• Toluwanimi Odemuyiwa, QE Committee, Fall 2023.

Leadership

• Co-chair, POPL Artifact Evaluation Committee, 2025. (44 submissions, 46 committee members, 107 reviews)

• Co-chair, POPL Artifact Evaluation Committee, 2024. (57 submissions, 41 committee members, 117 reviews).

• Co-founder and problem-writer, Utah Math Olympiad. Annual high school mathematics contest, 2013 – present.

• Co-chair, CIS Doctoral Association. Student association leader and PhD student-faculty representative, UPenn CIS, 2018 – 2021.

Websites

• CratesReport: Website for exploring Rust crates with the output of security related audits and tools (led by PhD student Muhammad Hassnain), 2026.

Open-Source Software

• ManyRegex: An execution engine for finding and comparing non-backtracking regex Denial of Service (DOS) attacks (led by undergraduate student Jake Roggenbuck), 2025-2026.

• USR Solver: An SMT solver for regular expressions over uninterpreted string variables, 2024-2026.

• Cargo Sherlock: Modeling trust in the Rust supply chain ecosystem using Z3, 2024-2026.

• Cargo Scan: a tool for auditing Rust crates, 2023-2026.

• Coenobita: A zero-cost capability library for Rust, 2024-2025.

• LHS: A static analysis tool using the MIR to identify memory safety attacks using /proc/self/mem, 2024-2025.

• PC^3: Proof-carrying code completions for Dafny, 2024-2025.

• Counterexamples in Rust: A collection and benchmark dataset of memory safety violations in Safe Rust, 2024.

• Guided incremental digraphs: incremental live and dead state detection with applications to SMT.

• Pystate: CRC-32 based state tracking for fuzzing Python objects.

• FP4: a stateful hardware fuzzer for P4 switches.

• dZ3: Z3’s derivative-based regex SMT solver.

• DiffStream: differential testing for Apache Flink programs.

• Flumina: a predictable programming model for parallel stream processing.

• Data transducers: quantitative monitoring for data streams with performance guarantees.

Invited Talks

• Safe Programming over Distributed Streams. National University of Singapore, August 2023.

• Session Preview: Logic and Decidability II. POPL, January 2023.

• Trustworthy Programming for Online Data Processing. UMass Amherst, April 2022.

• Trustworthy Programming for Online Data Processing. UC Riverside, March 2022.

• Trustworthy Programming for Online Data Processing. Oregon State University, March 2022.

• Trustworthy Programming for Online Data Processing. UC Davis, February 2022.

• Trustworthy Programming for Online Data Processing. Georgia Tech, February 2022.

• Trustworthy Systems for Online Data Processing. Portland State University, February 2022.

Invited Seminars

• FMxAI 2025: Intersection of Formal Methods and Artificial Intelligence. September–October 2025, Menlo Park, California. 78 attendees.

• FM+SE Vision 2030: Impact of Foundation/Large Models on Software Engineering. November 2023, Mexico City. 108 attendees (57 from industry, 51 from academia).

• Dagstuhl Seminar 23441: Ensuring the Reliability and Robustness of Database Management Systems. October–November 2023, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany. 36 attendees.

• Dagstuhl Seminar 19071: Specification formalisms for modern cyber-physical systems. February 2019, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany. 37 attendees.

• Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Recipients of the most prestigious awards in mathematics and computer science meet the next generation. Selected with funding (all except travel), September 22–27, 2019, Heidelberg, Germany.

Professional Service

• Program committee, POPL 2027 (14 reviews)

• Program committee, PLDI Student Research Competition (PLDI SRC) 2026 (4 reviews)

• External reviewer, CRC Press / Taylor & Francis 2026

• External reviewer, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 2026

• External reviewer, NSDI 2026

• External reviewer, POPL 2025

• Program committee, OOPSLA 2025 (11 reviews)

• Program committee, PLDI 2025 (13 reviews)

• Co-chair, POPL Artifact Evaluation Committee 2025 (44 submissions)

• Review panel, National Science Foundation 2024

• Program committee, PLDI 2024 (11 reviews)

• Co-chair, POPL Artifact Evaluation Committee 2024 (57 submissions)

• Review committee, SPLASH Student Research Competition (SPLASH SRC) 2023 (3 reviews)

• Review committee, PLDI Student Research Competition (PLDI SRC) 2023 (4 reviews)

• External reviewer, ESOP 2023

• Review committee, SPLASH Student Research Competition (SPLASH SRC) 2022 (6 reviews)

• External reviewer, Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS) 2021

• External reviewer, Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS) 2021

• External reviewer, CAV 2021

• Artifact evaluation committee, POPL 2021 (2 reviews)

• Artifact evaluation committee, CAV 2019 (6 reviews)

• External reviewer, Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR) 2018

Departmental and University Service

• Faculty mentoring committee, 2024-2026.

• Faculty panel, AvenueE/LEADR Summer Bridge 2026, Fall 2026.

• Moderator, UC Davis Undergraduate Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities Conference (URSCA), Spring 2026.

• Internal committee member (Cybersecurity), Spring 2026.

• Reviewer, Internal grant program, Winter 2026.

• Faculty panel, AvenueE/LEADR Summer Bridge 2025, Fall 2025.

• Moderator, UC Davis Undergraduate Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities Conference (URSCA), Spring 2025.

• Faculty panel, Undergraduate research skills course, Fall 2024.

• Faculty recruitment committee in systems, Spring 2024.

Outreach

• Vice president, Computing Connections Fellowship. 2022 – 2024.

• Judge for the ENVISION research competition by WiSTEM. Spring 2022.

• Instructor for AP Computer Science, Steppingstone Scholars high school outreach program. Fall 2021.

• Volunteer, SIGPLAN-M Mentoring Program, 2021 – 2022.

• Representative, Dean’s Doctoral Advisory Board. UPenn School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 2021 – 2022.

• Volunteer, Applicant-Support Program. UPenn Computer Science, Fall 2020.

Languages and Skills

• Fluent or experienced in: Rust, Python, C, C++, Java, OCaml, MATLAB; Z3, Dafny, Coq/Rocq, Alloy; Git, LaTeX, Amazon AWS S3/EC2.

Miscellaneous

• Putnam math exam: National rank 163.5 (2015), 150 (2014), 136 (2013), and 319 (2012) out of 4000+ participants. Scores of 30, 40, 40, and 30, respectively.