Aaron Bembenek
computer scientist ❊ reader of books ❊ fisher of fish
About me
I am a computer science postdoc at the University of Melbourne supervised by Toby Murray, working on Cybersecurity Assurance for Teams of Computers and Humans, a project combining computer security, formal methods, and machine learning (among other dimensions).
I earned a PhD in computer science at Harvard University, where I was advised by Stephen Chong and was a member of the programming languages group. My PhD research focused on combining logic programming and constraint solving, with applications to program analysis and synthesis.
I have an undergraduate degree in classics from Princeton University. I enjoy reading and spending time outdoors.
Publications
- From SMT to ASP: Solver-Based Approaches to Solving Datalog Synthesis-as-Rule-Selection Problems
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Aaron Bembenek, Michael Greenberg, and Stephen Chong
Proceedings of the ACM Programming Languages (POPL 2023)
pdf ❊ bib ❊ artifact - Formulog: Datalog + SMT + FP
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Aaron Bembenek, Michael Greenberg, and Stephen Chong
4th International Workshop on the Resurgence of Datalog in Academia and Industry (Datalog 2.0 2022)
pdf ❊ bib - Formulog: Datalog for SMT-Based Static Analysis
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Aaron Bembenek, Michael Greenberg, and Stephen Chong
Proceedings of the ACM Programming Languages (OOPSLA 2020)
pdf ❊ bib ❊ artifact ❊ extended version ❊ talk - Datalog-Based Systems Can Use Incremental SMT Solving (Extended Abstract)
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Aaron Bembenek, Michael Ballantyne, Michael Greenberg, and Nada Amin
36th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2020)
pdf ❊ bib ❊ talk - Going Into Greater Depth in the Quest for Hidden Frames (Late-Breaking Paper)
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João Gonçalves, Aaron Bembenek, Pedro Martins, and Amílcar Cardoso
10th International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2019)
pdf ❊ bib - Differential Privacy: A Primer for a Non-Technical Audience
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Alexandra Wood, Micah Altman, Aaron Bembenek, Mark Bun, Marco Gaboardi,
James Honaker, Kobbi Nissim, David R. O'Brien, Thomas Steinke, and Salil
Vadhan
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law (JETLaw 2018)
pdf ❊ bib - Bridging the Gap between Computer Science and Legal Approaches to Privacy
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Kobbi Nissim, Aaron Bembenek, Alexandra Wood, Mark Bun,
Marco Gaboardi, Urs Gasser, David R. O’Brien, and Salil Vadhan
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology (JOLT 2018)
Co-won the 2019 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
pdf ❊ bib
Projects
- Formulog
- Formulog ties together the logic programming language Datalog and off-the-shelf SMT solvers. It is designed for writing SMT-based static analyses in a way that is both close to their formal specifications, and amenable to high-level optimizations and efficient evaluation.
- AbcDatalog
- AbcDatalog is an open-source implementation of the logic programming language Datalog written in Java. It provides a basic GUI and ready-to-use implementations of multiple standard Datalog evaluation algorithms. It is designed to be easily extensible with new evaluation engines and language features.
Teaching
- Co-instructor, CSC 600: Programming Paradigms and Languages (San Francisco State, 2022)
- Co-organizer, CS 252r: Verified Compilation (Harvard, 2020)
- Teaching Fellow, CS 153: Compilers (Harvard, 2018)
- Teaching Fellow, CS 152: Programming Languages (Harvard, 2016)
Service
- Sub-reviewer, 16th International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming (FLOPS 2022)
Honors and awards
- Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), 2019)
- Nominated for Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates (Harvard, 2018)
- Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Harvard, 2016 and 2018)
- Smith Family Graduate Science and Engineering Fellowship (Harvard, 2017-2018)
Contact
Messenger pigeon is preferred. If your local dovecote is depleted, feel free to email me at Turn on JavaScript to view the email address. If you are on the University of Melbourne campus, you might be able to find me in Melbourne Connect (Building 290).