{"id":516,"date":"2014-07-01T10:36:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T10:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/inside_microsoft_research\/2014\/07\/01\/gulwani-wins-2014-robin-milner-young-researcher-award\/"},"modified":"2022-11-08T12:16:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T20:16:30","slug":"gulwani-wins-2014-robin-milner-young-researcher-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/gulwani-wins-2014-robin-milner-young-researcher-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulwani Wins 2014 Robin Milner Young Researcher Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sumit Gulwani (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> is a kind and accomplished person, the type who doesn\u2019t simply display concern when he sees something amiss, but actually rolls up his sleeves and begins to fix it.<\/p>\n

While his day job is as a Microsoft researcher, he also serves on the adjunct faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and on the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering affiliate faculty. But even those contributions pale in significance to his passion for empowering computer users and identifying better educational techniques to inspire those who might follow in his footsteps.<\/p>\n

Given that, it\u2019s hardly a surprise to read the glowing citation for his 2014 Robin Milner Young Researcher Award (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, recognizing outstanding contributions by young investigators in the area of programming languages. The recognition is presented annually by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (SIGPLAN) and was announced in Edinburgh, U.K., in mid-June during that group\u2019s 35th annual conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The detailed and flattering citation is too lengthy to recount here, but here\u2019s how it concludes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn summary, Dr. Gulwani is a highly motivated, creative, and inter-disciplinary researcher whose vision is to empower computer users around the world to be more productive and educated. His insights in using program synthesis to address problems in end-user programming and education will have deep and lasting influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The remarkable thing about this praise is that it\u2019s indisputably true. It\u2019s happening already. You can hear a rare humility in his voice even as he discusses the award, named after the late Robin Milner (1934-2010), who made foundational contributions to the field of programming languages and went on to win the A.M. Turing Award in 1991.<\/p>\n

‘Honored and Humbled’<\/h2>\n

\u201cI feel honored and humbled to receive such a prestigious award and would like to share it with all my collaborators, who were instrumental in what we have achieved until now,\u201d Gulwani says. \u201cI view this honor as not an individual accomplishment, but as a vote of confidence in the research that was accomplished. The two most instrumental factors were my workplace and my collaborators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am also delighted and encouraged that the community recognizes the significance of the problems that I am working on and the cross-disciplinary techniques that I am leveraging. The award thus provides me with the political capital to inspire young researchers to carefully select problems that are well-motivated and not shy away from leveraging cross-disciplinary techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gulwani, 35, will receive his Milner award in Mumbai, India, in January during the 42nd Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, co-sponsored by SIGPLAN and the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. The prospect excites him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to be quite special,\u201d he says, \u201csince I come from India and there is a chance that my parents might be able to see me receive the award.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gulwani has made pioneering contributions to the field of programming languages. His recognition that key connections span the fields of program verification and program synthesis has driven research that shows that imprecise human intent, in the form of examples, natural language, and other input methods, can be translated into intended programs by combining search over domain-specific languages with program-ranking techniques. Flash Fill (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, a feature in Excel 2013 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, is a prime example. It enables users to accomplish complex, repetitive programming tasks\u2014without requiring programming knowledge.<\/p>\n

Connecting with the Masses<\/h2>\n

\u201cHaving worked for years on developing program verification and synthesis techniques that might help software developers,\u201d Gulwani explains, \u201cI started feeling the need to directly connect with the masses in a manner that would leverage my technical expertise.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudying help forums made me realize the struggles of end users to accomplish various kinds of repetitive tasks\u2014and the ease with which they express their intent using examples and natural language. This led to work on developing program-synthesis techniques to enable nonprogrammers\u201499 percent of computer users\u2014to program repetitive tasks and thus enable them to more effectively and creatively leverage their computational devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

One future direction for such work, he says, is to develop general frameworks that enable easy development of domain-specific synthesizers such as Flash Fill.<\/p>\n

Gulwani also is applying program-verification and program-synthesis techniques to developing intelligent tutoring systems for numerous subject domains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work on computer-aided education,\u201d Gulwani explains, \u201cwhich involves automating repetitive tasks in education such as feedback generation and problem generation, is motivated by the opportunity to enable access to high-quality, interactive, and personalized education for every child\u2014especially for that vast majority of children who do not have access to good teachers or cannot afford one-on-one human tutoring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visionary components of Gulwani\u2019s work were recognized recently by the editorial board of Communications of the ACM (CACM): Two of his recent papers on program verification and program synthesis appeared as CACM Research Highlights in the same issue, and a research summary of his work on computer-aided education will soon appear as a CACM article.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are intriguing connections between end-user programming and education,\u201d Gulwani says, \u201cand, as a result, techniques for democratizing programming have a lot in common with techniques for democratizing high-quality education in various subject domains. Realization of these connections shall inspire more programming-language researchers to contribute to computer-aided education.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sumit Gulwani is a kind and accomplished person, the type who doesn\u2019t simply display concern when he sees something amiss, but actually rolls up his sleeves and begins to fix it. While his day job is as a Microsoft researcher, he also serves on the adjunct faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35981,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[194534,194561,194719,200801,200995,201525,195597,201975,196897,187179,196899,196900,203573,203575,203843,203951,203963,197339,204125,197639],"research-area":[13560],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog","tag-a-m-turing-award","tag-acm","tag-association-for-computing-machinery","tag-cacm","tag-communications-of-the-acm","tag-excel-2013","tag-flash-fill","tag-indian-institute-of-technology-kanpur","tag-program-synthesis","tag-program-verification","tag-programming-language-design-and-implementation","tag-programming-languages","tag-robin-milner","tag-robin-milner-young-researcher-award","tag-sigplan","tag-special-interest-group-on-algorithms-and-computation-theory","tag-special-interest-group-on-programming-languages","tag-sumit-gulwani","tag-symposium-on-principles-of-programming-languages","tag-university-of-washington","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"Rob Knies","formattedDate":"July 1, 2014","formattedExcerpt":"Sumit Gulwani is a kind and accomplished person, the type who doesn\u2019t simply display concern when he sees something amiss, but actually rolls up his sleeves and begins to fix it. While his day job is as a Microsoft researcher, he also serves on the…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35981"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":896748,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/896748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}