My research sits at the intersection of programming languages and data systems. I am interested in language implementation technologies — compilers, language VMs, runtime and compiler optimizations — and in how they meet modern data systems: data formats and serialization, parsing, query compilation and execution, and hardware acceleration via SIMD, GPUs, and emerging hardware (e.g., NPUs). The recurring theme of my work is bridging the gap between high-level programming abstractions and the systems and hardware that execute them — in practice, by building things and measuring them.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at VU Amsterdam, where I am a member of the Computer Systems group in the At Large team. I am also a part-time Assistant Professor at TU Eindhoven, where I am affiliated with the Database systems group.

Before joining the VU, I was a Principal Researcher at the Virtual Machine Research Group at Oracle Labs, and a member of the GraalVM team. While at Oracle, I was a member of ECMA TC39.

I hold a Ph.D. from USI Lugano. I did research internships at Mozilla Research and Oracle Labs, and was a guest of the SSW institute of JKU Linz. Before that, I earned a M.Sc. at the University of Pisa.

An updated list of my publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Prospective students

We are always looking for excellent Ph.D. students to join us. If you are interested in joining our group send me an email with your CV, research interests, and why you think there is a good match with our ongoing research.

If you are a VU or TU/e undergrad interested in doing research in our group just send an email to arrange an appointment to chat about current research opportunities and have a look at our open projects.

In exceptional cases where there is a very good fit in terms of research interests, we can offer internship positions to students outside of the VU. If you think there is a good fit, send me an email with your CV, research interests, and research plans.