Hi, my name is Kesha and I am a graduate student in Programming Languages at the University of Maryland. My advisor is Mike Hicks. I am interested broadly in program analysis and verification. Recently my focus has been on analyzing programs that run on quantum computers and verifying compilers for quantum circuits.
Publications
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Finding Substitutable Binary Code By Synthesizing Adapters
Vaibhav Sharma, Kesha Hietala, Stephen McCamant
Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 2019 -
Formal Verification vs. Quantum Uncertainty [pdf]
Robert Rand, Kesha Hietala, Michael Hicks
Summit on Advances in Programming Languages (SNAPL), 2019 -
Quantitative Robustness Analysis of Quantum Programs [pdf]
Shih-Han Hung, Kesha Hietala, Shaopeng Zhu, Mingsheng Ying, Michael Hicks, Xiaodi Wu
Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), 2019 -
Volume-Based Merge Heuristics for Disjunctive Numeric Domains
Andrew Ruef, Kesha Hietala, Arlen Cox
Static Analysis Symposium (SAS), 2018 -
Finding Substitutable Binary Code for Reverse Engineering by Synthesizing Adapters
Vaibhav Sharma, Kesha Hietala, Stephen McCamant
International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), 2018
Drafts
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A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits [pdf, github]
Kesha Hietala, Robert Rand, Shih-Han Hung, Xiaodi Wu, Michael Hicks
In submission. -
Quantum Programming Languages [pdf]
Kesha Hietala
Writeup for a class project, December 2016. Written for readers with a basic understanding of quantum computation and no background in programming languages. -
Detecting Behaviorally-Equivalent Functions via Symbolic Execution [pdf]
Kesha Hietala
Undergraduate Thesis, May 2016
Posters and Presentations
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Tracking Errors through Types in Quantum Programs [abstract, slides, video]
Kesha Hietala, Robert Rand, Michael Hicks
Presented by Robert Rand at PLanQC 2020. -
A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits [abstract, slides, video]
Kesha Hietala, Robert Rand, Shih-Han Hung, Xiaodi Wu, Michael Hicks
Presented with Kartik Singhal at PLanQC 2020. -
Verified Optimization in a Quantum Intermediate Representation [poster, abstract, slides]
Kesha Hietala, Robert Rand, Shih-Han Hung, Xiaodi Wu, Michael Hicks
Poster presented at NISQ 2019 and extended abstract presented at QPL 2019. For more recent developments, see A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits. -
Finding Semantically Equivalent Binary Code By Synthesizing Adaptors [poster]
Kesha Hietala, Vaibhav Sharma, Stephen McCamant
Poster presented at the 2017 Grad Cohort Workshop. -
Approaches to Compiling Functional Languages [slides]
Kesha Hietala
Two-part lecture given to a seminar on functional programming, University of Minnesota, May 2016. -
A Comparison of Approaches to Compiling Functional Programming Languages [poster]
Kesha Hietala
Poster presented at the University of Minnesota Spring 2015 Undergraduate Research Symposium and Winchell Undergraduate Research Symposium, May 2015.
Teaching
- Teaching Assistant, Organization of Programming Languages (CMSC 330), University of Maryland, Fall 2017 & Spring 2018
- Teaching Assistant, Advanced Programming Principles (CSCI 2041), University of Minnesota, Fall 2014 & Spring 2015
Graduate Coursework
- Programming Languages
- UMN CSCI 5106 Programming Languages
- UMN CSCI 5161 Introduction to Compilers
- UMD CMSC 631 Program Analysis and Understanding
- UMD CMSC 838M Model Checking
- UMD ENEE 645 Compilers and Optimization
- Security
- UMN CSCI 5271 Introduction to Computer Security
- UMN CSCI 5471 Modern Cryptography
- UMD CMSC 818O Computer and Network Security
- Misc. Math
- UMN MATH 5248 Cryptology and Number Theory
- UMN CSCI 5251 Error-Correcting Codes, Finite Fields, Algebraic Curves
- UMN MATH 5165 Mathematical Logic I
- UMD CMSC 666 Numerical Analysis I
- Misc. CS
- UMD CMSC 858K Introduction to Quantum Information Processing
- UMD CMSC 714 High Performance Computing Systems
- UMD CMSC 651 Analysis of Algorithms
Service
- Student volunteer at POPL 2020
- Organizer for UMD’s PL reading group, Fall 2018 & Spring 2019
- Mentor for Technica hackathon, 2018 and 2019
- Volunteer for Girls Talk Math summer camp, 2018
- Sub-reviewer for CCS 2017, Oakland S&P 2017, RC 2019, PLDI 2020, QCTIP 2020
Personal
My hobbies include painting, pottery, and spending time with my three cats. My husband, Thomas Rolinger, is also a graduate student in Computer Science at UMD. He focuses on high performance computing.