Kasra

Kasra Ferdowsi

I'm a PhD candidate in the Programming Languages and Systems group at UC San Diego, co-advised by Nadia Polikarpova and Sorin Lerner. I completed my Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley in 2019, and my Master's in Computer Science at UC San Diego in 2022.
My research interests are at the intersection of Programming Languages and Human-Computer Interactions, with a focus on how Program Synthesis (using Large Language Models or PL techniques) can help us be better, faster and happier programmers. To that end, I've developed tools and techniques for program synthesis, and designed an an inspection tool and ran a study on the validation of AI-generated programs.
You can find my CV here, reach me at kferdows@ucsd.edu, and message me on the many social media sites.
I'm on the job market in 2024!
I'm looking for industry research and research engineering jobs, particularly in the design and development of programming tools. Please reach out if you know of any opportunities!

Research

Papers

  • Live Exploration of AI-Generated Programs
    Under Submission

    Kasra Ferdowsi, Ruanqianqian (Lisa) Huang, Michael B. James, Nadia Polikarpova, Sorin Lerner

    [ArXiv]
  • ColDeco: An End User Spreadsheet Inspection Tool for AI-Generated Code
    VL/HCC 2023

    Kasra Ferdowsi, Jack Williams, Ian Drosos, Andrew D. Gordon, Carina Negreanu, Nadia Polikarpova, Advait Sarkar and Benjamin Zorn

    [Paper]
  • Investigating the Impact of Using a Live Programming Environment in a CS1 Course
    SIGCSE TS 2022

    Ruanqianqian (Lisa) Huang, Kasra Ferdowsi, Ana Selvaraj, Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj and Sorin Lerner

    [Paper] [Talk]
  • LooPy: Interactive Program Synthesis with Control Structures
    OOPSLA 2021

    Kasra Ferdowsifard, Shraddha Barke, Hila Peleg, Sorin Lerner, Nadia Polikarpova

    [Paper] [Talk] [Online Editor] [Source Code]
  • Small-Step Live Programming by Example
    UIST 2020

    Kasra Ferdowsifard, Allen Ordookhanians, Hila Peleg, Sorin Lerner, Nadia Polikarpova

    [Paper] [Talk] [Online Editor] [Source Code]

Other Writings

  • Towards Human-Centered Types and Type Debugging
    PLATEAU 2023

    Kasra Ferdowsi

    [Paper] [Slides]
  • The Usability of Advanced Type Systems: Rust as a Case Study
    Research Exam 2022

    Kasra Ferdowsi

    [Written Report] [Slides]
  • Programming by Partial Examples
    Class Project 2021

    Kasra Ferdowsifard and Ruanqianqian Huang

    [Class Report]

Talks

  • Exploring and Validating AI-Generated Programs Through Concrete Values
    2023

    Kasra Ferdowsi

    [Slides]

Teaching

Courses

Service

Mentorship

Volunteering