Tomas Petricek

Academic Experience

Assistant Professor, Charles University, Prague, 2022 – present

I joined the Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics to pursue fundamental research on simple, open and trustworthy programming systems, using theoretical, applied and interdisciplinary research methods.
Lecturer, University of Kent, 2018 – 2022

As a member of the Programming Languages and Systems group, I worked on making programming with data easy, trustworthy and accessible. I applied for grants from EPSRC (UK) and ERC (EU), Dstl & GCHQ (UK), taught graduate and undergraduate modules, supervised a PhD student and initiated interdisciplinary collaboration with a colleagues from Department of Philosophy.
Collaborating Fellow and Visiting Researcher, The Alan Turing Institute, 2016 – 2020

I led a project Programming Tools for Open Data Journalism funded through Google Digital News Initiative, joined the flagship ATI project Artificial Intelligence for Data Analytics as a co-investigator and obtained funding from Dstl and GCHQ for a follow-up project on semi-automated data wrangling.
Post-doctoral Researcher and Contractor, Microsoft Research Cambridge, 2014 – 2016

I led the development of an open-source projects focused on doing data science with F#. Resulting research was awarded a Distinguished Paper award and selected as an SIGPLAN Research Highlight.

PhD, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 2011 – 2016

Thesis Context-aware Programming Languages develops coeffects, a theory for tracking information about environment in which programs are executed. I also devised a novel way of presenting the results in the form of widely read interactive essay (tomasp.net/coeffects). Supervised by Prof. Alan Mycroft.
BSc and MSc, Computer Science, Charles University, Prague, 2004 – 2010

MSc completed with distinction. Final thesis Reactive Programming with Events, supervised by Dr Don Syme, developed abstractions for reactive and concurrent programming that were presented in workshop papers.

IFIP TC2 Working Group 2.16 Language Design (2024 – present). Member of an invitation-based group of 40 leading programming language experts that meets twice a year for an intensive week-long meeting.

Reviewers’ Choice Award, ‹Programming› 2023. Awarded for a paper on programming systems.
Reviewers’ Choice Award, ‹Programming› 2020. Awarded for a paper on data exploration tools.
ACM SIGPLAN Research Highlight. My first-author paper was chosen as an ACM SIGPLAN Research Highlight, making it one of the three best programming language papers of the past year.
Editors’ Choice Award, ‹Programming› 2018. Awarded for a paper on the history of monads.
Reviewers’ Choice Award, ‹Programming› 2017. Awarded for a paper on the history of errors.
Distinguished Paper Award, PLDI 2016. Awarded for a paper on types for semi-structured data
ACM Student Research Competition. 1st place at ICFP 2014 and 2nd place at ICFP 2012
Microsoft MVP Award, 2004 – 2023. Awarded annually for contributions to the F# community

Data Science in F#, Berlin (September 2023). Keynote: Designing composable visualizations
ASL/APA Meeting, San Francisco (April 2023). Invited Talk: Cultures of programming
Huawei Global Technology Summit, Edinburgh (July 2022). Invited Talk: Rethinking data exploration tools
CodeMesh, Virtual (November 2020). Keynote: Cultures of programming
ScalaDays, Berlin (May 2018). Keynote: Functionalist programming language design
Data Science Summit, Cambridge (June 2017). Keynote: The Gamma: Democratizing data science
ManLang Conference, Prague (Sept 2017). Keynote: Language Challenges of Targeting Multiple Runtimes

PRIMUS Research Programme, Charles University, 2024 – 2028

Awarded €610,000 for research on Types for data-centric programming to cover 60% FTE of my time, two post-docs for 24 months each and 2 PhD students for the duration of the project.
Fellowship, ACM History Committee, 2018

Awarded $4000 to study the history of programming errors, looking at technical, formal and social means for mitigating them, resulting in a work-in-progress book Cultures of Programming.
Dstl & GCHQ grants, The Alan Turing Institute, 2017 – 2020

Awarded £420,000 for research on tooling for data science to cover a post-doc for 6 months, Research Software Engineer for 3 years, 3 summer interns, my salary/buyout for 1 day/week.
Innovation Fund, Google Digital News Initiative, 2016

Awarded €50,000 for research on Programming tools for data journalism. My proposal was selected as one of 128 out of 1,200 and allowed me to develop an independent research project at The Alan Turing Institute.
Travel Grants, ACM, 2010, 2012, 2014

As an ACM Student Research Competition finalist, I was repeatedly awarded travel grants covering travel and registration expenses for top-tier programming language conferences PLDI 2010, ICFP 2012, ICFP 2014.

Program Committee Member. Total 42 memberships including Onward! 2024, OOPSLA 2024, PX 2023, ECOOP 2023, Onward! Essays 2023, Programming 2023, PAINT 2023, OOPSLA 2023, ProWeb 2022, PADL 2022, ECOOP 2022, PX 2022, Programming 2022, HOPL IV 2021, Programming 2021, Onward! Essays 2021, AutoDS 2021, PX 2020, LIVE 2020, HaPoC 2019, Onward! Essays 2019, LIVE 2019, TFP 2015, ISMM 2012
Reviewer. In the past, I also reviewed papers for UIST, Computing, TOPLAS, Programming, Minds and Machines, Philosophy & Technology, ECOOP, PLoP, Simulation, Software: Practice and Experience, EICS, ICFP, IEEE Access, POPL, JLAMP, PLACES, TFP, PPDP, CC, Computability in Europe, TLCA
PhD Examiner. I reviewed PhD theses completed at Hasso Plattner Institute (2024), Université Paris-Saclay (2024), CTU Prague (2023), University of Ghent (2022)
Grant Proposal Reviewer. I reviewed grant proposals for GAUK (Czechia), FONDECYT (Chile), The Alan Turing Institute (UK), EPSRC (UK), ISF (Israel)

General Chair, International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, 2025
Steering Committee Member, AOSA, Inc., 2024 – present
Symposium Co-chair, Symposium on History and Philosophy of Programming (HaPoP5), Lille, 2022
Special Issue Editor, Programming and Computing in Context, Philosophy & Technology, 2020
Track Chair, Symposium on New Ideas in Programming and Reflections on Software (Onward!), 2019
Steering Committee Member, Onward!, 2019 – present
Symposium Chair, Symposium on History and Philosophy of Programming (HaPoP4), Oxford, 2018
Workshop Co-chair, Salon des Refusés: Dialectics for New Computer Science, ‹Programming› 2018 and 2017
Council Member and Vice-President, Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing, 2017 – 2021
Founding Board Member, The F# Software Foundation, 2014