I do programming languages and computer architecture. I like research that breaks down abstraction barriers and rethinks the hardware–software interface. I worked on approximate computing, the idea that computers can be more efficient if we let them make mistakes. See what’s going on in my research group, which is called Capra.

I am an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, where I am part of the Computer Systems Laboratory and the programming languages group. I graduated from the University of Washington in 2015. Here’s my CV.

latest blogging: May 28, 2024 — more bloggings — subscribe

One Weird Trick for Efficient Pangenomic Variation Graphs (and File Formats for Free)

Last time, I introduced pangenomic variation graphs, the standard text file format that biologists use for them, and a hopelessly naïve reference data model we implemented for them. This time, we use a single principle—flattening–to build an efficient representation that is not only way faster than the naïve library but also competitive with an exisitng, optimized toolkit. Flattening also yields a memory-mapped file format “for free” that, in a shamelessly cherry-picked scenario, is more than a thousand times faster than the serialization-based alternative.

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