Kai-Oliver Prott

This page gives an overview about me and my projects. ORCID: 0000-0002-5795-6308

About me

I am working at the Kiel University as a PhD Student since November 2020 in the Department of Computer Science. My Research Group is "Programming Languages and Compiler Construction", where I am working with Prof. Dr. Michael Hanus. You can find contact details at my department page.

Interests and Projects

I am interested in Functional programming (preferrably with Haskell) and compiler tooling. In the past I have also worked a bit with Coq and on high-performance numerical computations with CPU and GPU.

My current project is a plugin for GHC that adds an implicit monadic effect to a language. The tool aims to simplify development of research languages/DSLs and to provide a tight integration with Haskell. The project is currently unpublished (see below), but the github repository for the tool is available here. Within this project I learned a lot about the internals of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. I also contributed a small patch to GHC for an itch that bothered me.

Publications and Talks

• Embedding Functional Logic Programming in Haskell via a Compiler Plugin (2023, K. Prott, F. Teegen, J. Christiansen)
• A Monadic Implementation of Functional Logic Programs (2022, M. Hanus, K. Prott, F. Teegen)
• Haskell⁻¹: automatic function inversion in Haskell (2021, F. Teegen, K. Prott, N. Bunkenburg)
• Student Research Competition at ICFP 2020 (3rd place): A GHC-Plugin to Compile Effectful Languages (2020, K. Prott)
• Master’s Thesis: Extending the Glasgow Haskell Compiler for functional-logic Programs with Curry-Plugin (2020, K. Prott)

Yet to be published:

• More results from the project on using a plugin to add an implicit monadic effect to Haskell code (https://github.com/cau-placc/ghc-language-plugin).

Working on:

• Adapting GHC to make it possible to parse different syntax using plugins. This would allow a full implementation of Curry using only GHC plugins. See GHC issue #22401.

Education

• November 2020 - present: PhD Student at Kiel University in Computer Science
• October 2018 - October 2020: Studied at Kiel University – Master of Science (Computer Science) – Graduated with Grade 1.0.
• October 2015 - October 2018: Studied at Kiel University – Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) – Graduated with Grade 1.3.

Teaching

• WS24/25: Declarative programming (in german)
• SS24: Introduction to Algorithms (in german)
• SS24: Declarative programming languages (in german)
• WS23/24: Declarative programming (in german)
• SS23: Introduction to Algorithms (in german)
• WS22/23: Declarative programming (in german)
• WS22/23: Declarative programming languages (in german)
• WS22/23: Seminar on Programming Languages (in german)
• WS21/22: Advanced Programming (in german)
• SS21: Functional Programming
• WS20/21: Advanced Programming (in german)
• WS20/21: Concurrent and distributed programming
• WS19/20: Functional Programming
• WS18/19: Advanced Programming (in german)

Other

• 2024: Member of the examination board for computer science at Kiel University