About Me

I am an assistant professor of computer science at Denison University, where I started in 2024. I love board games, especially social deduction games. I enjoy hiking, looking at trees, and finding sealife. Growing up I was a theatre kid, competitive singer, and eagle scout.


Research Interests

In general I am interested in designing ways to squeeze utility out of languages. This can come in many shapes:

  • logic and type theory
  • static analyses (especially cost)
  • domain-specific languages
  • automata and decision procedures
    • My thesis work was on a type system for automatic cost analysis called AARA (Automatic Amortized Resource Analysis).

    Some History

    I finished my PhD in 2024 at CMU where I studied a type system for automatic cost analysis and was advised by Jan Hoffmann. At some point during my PhD I worked at Amazon's CodeGuru and taught a summer course in functional programming. I started my PhD in 2018. The summer before that, I worked on Hack at Facebook. And the spring before that, I earned my BS in CS from Cornell, along with Math and Philosophy minors. And before all that, I grew up in a town outside Philadelphia called Eagleville.


    Thanks

    I couldn't be here today without some amazing people: my mom and dad for being there throughout; Dexter Kozen and Bob Constable for mentoring me in undergrad; Jan Hoffmann for being the kind of advisor I needed; Dilsun Kaynar for mentoring my teaching; Frank Pfenning, Stephanie Balzer, and Tom Reps for sitting on my thesis committee and helping with career advice; and I'm sure many more I haven't mentioned, and many more yet to come!


    Contact

    kahnd at denison dot edu

    Olin 212