Brianna Marshall

PhD Student. Software Engineer.

👋 Hi.

I'm a PhD student in computer science advised by Amal Ahmed and Steven Holtzen at Northeastern University. My research interests revolve around how programming languages can be used to write more reliable software with less effort, taking into account practical concerns like performance and interactions between multiple languages. I'm especially interested in type systems that strongly protect against classes of errors that are difficult to debug, such as those involving effects or memory.

Previously, I was a software engineer at Microsoft in the Azure Quantum team. During that time, I contributed to the compiler and language design for Q#, Microsoft's quantum programming language. Highlights include leading the switch to Hindley-Milner-based type inference, the switch from statement-based to expression-based syntax, and a complete rewrite of the compiler in Rust, all while maintaining a high degree of backwards compatibility.

Timeline

September 2024
I'm a teaching assistant for CS 4400 Programming Languages during the Fall 2024 semester.
September 2024
I gave a talk at HOPE 2024 about some work in progress: An Incremental Approach to the Semantics of Borrowing.
September 2023
My PhD at Northeastern University begins after leaving Microsoft in August.
January 2020
I started a full time job as a software engineer at Microsoft. In the Azure Quantum team, I worked on the compiler and language design for Q#.
December 2019
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
June 2019
For the summer, I was an intern at Microsoft in the Azure Quantum team. My internship involved adding support for code completion to the Q# language server.

Publications

Workshops