Daniel Hillerström

My research interests revolve around effect handler oriented programming, a novel programming paradigm centred around effect handlers, which empowers programmers to build modular and scalable interactive software, enabling the development of safe, secure, reliable, and robust applications. My work focuses mostly on the foundations for effect handler oriented programming.

• I work with Sam Lindley, Andreas Rossberg, Luna Phipps-Costin, and others on the WasmFX project, whose goal is to standardise effect handlers as the basis for stack switching in WebAssembly. At the moment most effort is being allocated towards building a high-performance implementation of WasmFX in the WebAssembly engine wasmtime.
• John Longley and I investigate the expressive power of effect handlers and how they fit into the landscape of programming abstractions. We are working on semantic characterisations of first-class control to unveil and better understand the mathematical content of control operators.
• With Wenhao Tang, I study frontend matters for programming with effect handlers such as the design of type-and-effect systems. Currently, we are developing the notion of control flow linearity, a novel way of combining linear resources with unrestricted first-class control.

My research programme aims to push effect handlers into systems programming languages to provide a principled means for controlling the effectful nature of systems. A particular interest of mine is applications of effect handlers in operating systems as many concepts in this space have elegant and modular formulations in terms of effect handlers.

Papers

1. • Asymptotic speedup with effect handlers (draft)
   • Daniel Hillerström, Sam Lindley, and John Longley
   • Submitted to JFP
     • pdf
     • code
2. • Effect Handlers, Evidently
   • Ningning Xie, Jonathan Brachthäuser, Daniel Hillerström, Philipp Schuster, and Daan Leijen
   • In ICFP'20
     • pdf
3. • Effects for Efficiency: Asymptotic Speedup with First-Class Control
   • Daniel Hillerström, Sam Lindley, and John Longley
   • In ICFP'20
     • pdf
     • arxiv
     • code
4. • Effect Handlers via Generalised Continuations
   • Daniel Hillerström, Sam Lindley, and Robert Atkey
   • In JFP (special issue on algebraic effects and handlers) 30:e5
     • pdf
5. • Shallow Effect Handlers
   • Daniel Hillerström and Sam Lindley
   • In APLAS'18
     • pdf
6. • Concurrent Systems Programming with Effect Handlers
   • Stephen Dolan, Spiros Eliopoulos, Daniel Hillerström, Anil Madhavapeddy, KC Sivaramakrishnan, and Leo White
   • In TFP'17
     • pdf
7. • Continuation Passing Style for Effect Handlers
   • Daniel Hillerström, Sam Lindley, Robert Atkey, and KC Sivaramakrishnan
   • In FSCD'17
     • pdf
8. • Liberating Effects with Rows and Handlers
   • Daniel Hillerström and Sam Lindley
   • In TyDe@ICFP'16
     • pdf

Dissertations

1. • Foundations for Programming and Implementing Effect Handlers
   • Daniel Hillerström
   • PhD dissertation, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, 2021
     • pdf
2. • Compilation of Effect Handlers and their Applications in Concurrency
   • Daniel Hillerström
   • MSc(R) dissertation, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, 2016
     • pdf
3. • Handlers for Algebraic Effects in Links
   • Daniel Hillerström
   • MSc dissertation, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, 2015
     • pdf
4. • The Constructive Completeness of Intuitionistic Propositional Logic
   • Daniel Hillerström and Mathias Ruggaard Pedersen
   • BSc dissertation, Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, 2013
     • pdf (in Danish)

Extended abstracts

1. • Composing UNIX with Effect Handlers
   • Daniel Hillerström
   • ML Family Workshop 2021
     • pdf
2. • Broken Links (Presentation)
   • Frank Emrich and Daniel Hillerström
   • ProWeb Workshop 2020
     • pdf
3. • Handlers.Js (Presentation)
   • Daniel Hillerström
   • ProWeb Workshop 2018
     • pdf
4. • Effectively Tackling the Awkward Squad
   • Stephen Dolan, Spiros Eliopoulos, Daniel Hillerström, Anil Madhavapeddy, KC Sivaramakrishnan, and Leo White
   • ML Family Workshop 2017
     • pdf
5. • Compiling Links Effect Handlers to the OCaml Backend
   • Daniel Hillerström, Sam Lindley, and KC Sivaramakrishnan
   • ML Family Workshop 2016
     • pdf

1. • WasmFX: Structured Stack Switching via Effect Handlers in WebAssembly
   • • Huawei Zurich Research Center topic meeting, Switzerland, Apr 2023
     • • slides
     • Dagstuhl seminar 23101, Germany, Mar 2023
     • • slides
     • Huawei Edinburgh Joint Lab Workshop, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Jan 2023
     • • slides
     • Wasm Research Day, San Francisco, California, USA, Oct 2022
     • • slides
       • code
       • code
     • SPLS, virtual event, Oct 2021
     • • slides
     • Wasm Stacks Subgroup, virtual event, Sep 2021
     • • slides
2. • Composing UNIX with Effect Handlers: A Case Study in Effect Handler Oriented Programming
   • • Elements of Programming Languages guest lecture, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Nov 2022
     • • code
     • Programming Research Lab, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Nov 2022
     • • code
     • Huawei Zurich Research Center, Switzerland, Oct 2022
     • • code
     • Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA, May 2022
     • • slides
       • code
     • ML Family Workshop, virtual event, Seoul, South Korea, Aug 2021
     • • video
       • code
     • Dagstuhl seminar 21992, virtual event, Germany, Jul 2021
     • • code
       • report
     • PLUG, virtual event, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, Dec 2020
     • • code
       • code (annotated)
3. • Asymptotic Speedup with Effect Handlers
   • • FATA seminar, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, Dec 2022
     • • slides
     • ICFP, virtual event, New Jersey, USA, Aug 2020
     • • video
     • Shonan seminar 146, Japan, Mar 2019
     • • slides
     • PLInG meeting, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Jul 2018
     • • slides
4. • Effect Handlers, Evidently
   • • Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA, Sep 2019
     • • slides
5. • Breaking Links
   • • Shonan seminar 146, Japan, Mar 2019
     • • code
6. • Taking Back Control
   • • Google, Aarhus, Denmark, Dec 2018
     • • slides
       • code
7. • Handlers.Js
   • • Tarides, Paris, France, Nov 2022
     • • slides
     • Dagstuhl seminar 18172, Germany, Apr 2018
     • • report
     • ProWeb, Nice, France, Apr 2018
     • • slides
8. • Concurrent Programming with Effect Handlers
   • • CUFP@ICFP, Oxford, England, UK, Sep 2017
     • • tutorial
       • website
9. • Continuation Passing Style for Effect Handlers
   • • FSCD, Oxford, England, UK, Sep 2017
     • • slides
10. • An Abstract Machine Semantics for Handlers
    • • SPLS, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, Mar 2017
      • • slides
11. • Compiling Links Effect Handlers to the OCaml Backend
    • • ML Family Workshop, Nara, Japan, Sep 2017
      • • slides
        • video
12. • Liberating Effects with Rows and Handlers
    • • TyDe@ICFP, Nara, Japan, Sep 2017
      • • code
        • code (annotated)
        • video
13. • Asynchronous Effect-based Input and Output
    • • CDT Pervasive Parallelism student showcase, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Jun 2017
      • • slides
14. • Runtime Agnostic Concurrency with Handlers
    • • Pervasive Parallelism lunch talk, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Oct 2016
      • • slides
15. • Programming with Algebraic Effects and Handlers
    • • Critical Blue Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, May 2016
      • • code
16. • Towards Compilation of Affine Algebraic Effect Handlers
    • • Systems Research Group Meeting, University of Cambridge, England, UK, Apr 2016
      • • slides

• <Programming> vol. 8
• ICFP'23 (external reviewer)
• HOPE'23 (co-chair)
• SRC@ICFP'23 (co-chair)
• HOPE'22 (co-chair)
• SRC@ICFP'22 (co-chair)
• AEC@ESOP'22
• SPLS'22
• Effect Handlers Benchmark suite (co-chair) 2021-22
• APLAS'21 (external reviewer)
• ProWeb'21
• SPLS'19
• AEC@ICFP'19
• ICFP Programming Contest 2017