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Mohsen Lesani
Associate Professor
Computer Science and Engineering Department
University of California, Santa Cruz

Email:
      mlesani AT ucsc.edu

     
Mohsen Lesani

I have positions for motivated students. I will be glad to hear about your interests and accomplishments.

 

I am an associate professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz. I was a postdoc at MIT and obtained my PhD from UCLA. My research interests are reliability and security of software systems especially concurrent and distributed systems. Our recent focus is on secure replicated systems and distributed machine learning. I received the NSF CAREER award in 2020 and DARPA YFA award in 2022. My research has been recognized as SIGPLAN Research Highlight in 2019, received the distinguished paper award at OOPSLA 2018 and has been supported by multiple NSF grants.


 Projects
         
 

Here are some of our current and past projects:


- Secure distributed systems
      S&P'22DISC'23DISC'24
- Data analytics
      ICFP'21
- Automatic analysis and synthesis of distributed data stores
      POPL'19CAV'20PLDI'22
- Verification of distributed systems
      POPL'16ICFP'20
- Blockchain transactions
      ICBC'20PODC'21CSF'23
- Machine learning for performance models
      MAPL'20
- Domain-specific languages and type systems
      OOPSLA'18CACM'21
- Automatic fence insertion for concurrent systems
      OOPSLA'15PODC'17DISC'19
- Concurrency programming models, testing and verification
      PPoPP'11CONCUR'12DISC'13DISC'14CAV'14NFM'19OOPSLA'22

          
 Papers


BA: Reconfigurable Heterogeneous Quorum Systems (short paper)
DISC '24 (The International Symposium on Distributed Computing)
Xiao Li, Mohsen Lesani
[Paper] More

Vulnerability Flow Type Systems
LangSec '24 (Language-theoretic Security and Applications Workshop at the IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium 2024)
Mohsen Lesani
[Paper] More

Quorum Subsumption for Heterogeneous Quorum Systems
DISC '23 (The International Symposium on Distributed Computing)
Xiao Li, Eric Chan, Mohsen Lesani
[Paper] More

Cross-chain Swaps with Preferences
CSF '23 (IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium)
Eric Chan, Marek Chrobak, Mohsen Lesani
[Paper] More

Hamband: RDMA Replicated Data Types
Farzin Houshmand, Javad Saberlatibari, Mohsen Lesani
PLDI '22 (ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation)
[Paper] More

C4: Verified Transactional Objects
M. Lesani, L. Xia, A. Kaseorg, C. Bell, A. Chlipala, B. Pierce, S. Zdancewic
OOPSLA '22 (ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)
[Paper] More

Hamraz: Resilient Partitioning and Replication
Xiao Li, Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani
S&P '22 (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy)
[Paper] More

Grafs: Declarative Graph Analytics
Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani, Keval Vora
ICFP '21 (ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming)
[Paper] More

Brief Announcement: Brokering with Hashed Timelock Contracts is NP-Hard
Eric Chan, Mohsen Lesani
PODC '21 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)
[Paper] More

BioScript: programming safe chemistry on laboratories-on-a-chip
Jason Ott, Tyson Loveless, Chris Curtis, Mohsen Lesani, and Philip Brisk. 2021.
CACM '21 (Communications of the ACM 64, 2, February 2021)
[Paper]

TLC: Temporal Logic of Distributed Components
Jeremiah Griffin, Mohsen Lesani, Narges Shadab, Xizhe Yin
ICFP '20 (ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming)
[Paper] More

Hampa: Solver-aided Recency-Aware Replication
Xiao Li, Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani
CAV '20 (International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification)
[Paper] More

UBITect: A Precise and Scalable Method to Detect Use-Before-Initialization bugs in Linux Kernel
Y. Zhai, Y. Hao, H. Zhang, D. Wang, C. Song, Z. Qian, M. Lesani, S. Krishnamurthy, P. Yu
ESEC/FSE '20 (The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering)
[Paper] More

Cross-Chain Transactions
Narges Shadab, Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani
ICBC '20 (IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency)
[Paper] More

Learning Quantitative Representation Synthesis
Mayur Patil, Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani
MAPL '20 (ACM SIGPLAN Machine Learning and Programming Languages Workshop)
[Paper] More

Hamsaz: Replication Coordination Analysis and Synthesis
Farzin Houshmand, Mohsen Lesani
POPL '19 (ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages)
[Paper] More

Polynomial-time Fence Insertion For Structured Programs
Mohammad Taheri, Arash Pourdamghani, Mohsen Lesani
DISC '19 (The International Symposium on Distributed Computing)
[Paper] More

Transaction Protocol Verification with Labeled Synchronization Logic
Mohsen Lesani
NFM '19 (NASA Formal Methods Symposium)
[Paper] More

BioScript: Programming Safe Chemistry of Laboratories-on-a-Chip
Jason Ott, Chris Curtis, Tyson Loveless, Mohsen Lesani, Philip Brisk
OOPSLA '18 (ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)
Distinguished paper award
SIGPLAN Research Highlight 2019
Invited to Communications of ACM
[Paper] More

Brief Announcement: Fence Insertion for Straight-line Programs is in P
Mohsen Lesani
PODC '17 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)
[Paper] More

Chapar: Certified Causally Consistent Distributed Key-Value Stores
Mohsen Lesani, Christian J. Bell, Adam Chlipala
POPL '16 (ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages)
[Paper] More

Declarative Fence Insertion
John Bender, Mohsen Lesani, Jens Palsberg
OOPSLA '15 (ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)
[Paper] More

AtomChase: Directed Search towards Atomicity Violations
Mahdi Eslamimehr, Mohsen Lesani
ISSRE '15 (IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering)
Best paper award
More

Decomposing Opacity
Mohsen Lesani, Jens Palsberg
DISC '14 (International Symposium on DIStributed Computing), WTTM '13
[Paper] More

Automatic Atomicity Verification for Clients of Concurrent Data Structures
Mohsen Lesani, Todd Millstein, Jens Palsberg
CAV '14 (International Conference on Computer Aided Verification)
[Paper] More

On the Correctness of Transactional Memory Algorithms
Mohsen Lesani
PhD Dissertation
[Dissertation] More

MrCrypt: Static Analysis for Secure Cloud Computations
Sai Deep Tetali, Mohsen Lesani, Rupak Majumdar, Todd Millstein
OOPSLA '13 (ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)
[Paper] More

Proving Non-opacity
Mohsen Lesani, Jens Palsberg
DISC '13 (International Symposium on DIStributed Computing), Transact'13
[Paper] More

A Framework for Formally Verifying Software Transactional Memory Algorithms
Mohsen Lesani, Victor Luchangco, Mark Moir
CONCUR '12  (International Conference on Concurrency Theory)
[Paper] More

Communicating Memory Transactions
Mohsen Lesani, Jens Palsberg
PPoPP '11 (ACM Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming)
[Paper]

Semantics-preserving Sharing Actors
AGERE '13 (ACM Workshop on Programming based on Actors, Agents, and Decentralized Control)
Mohsen Lesani, Antonio Lain
[Paper] More

Specifying Transactional Memories with Nontransactional Operations
WTTM '13  (Workshop on the Theory of Transactional Memory)
Mohsen Lesani, Victor Luchangco, Mark Moir
[Paper]

Putting Opacity in its Place
Mohsen Lesani, Victor Luchangco, Mark Moir
WTTM '12  (Workshop on the Theory of Transactional Memory)
[Paper]

Fuzzy Trust Aggregation And Personalized Trust Inference In Virtual Social Networks
Mohsen Lesani, Niloufar Montazeri
Journal of Computational Intelligence 25/2, 2009
[Paper]

Aria Language, Towards Agent Orientation Paradigm
Mohsen Lesani, Niloufar Montazeri
ICSOFT '08 (International Joint conference on Software Technologies)
[Paper]

Successful Cooperation between Heterogeneous Fuzzy Q-Learning Agents
Ali Akhavan Bitaghsir, Amir Moghimi, Mohsen Lesani, Mohammad Mehdi Keramati, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, Babak Nadjar Arabi
SMC '04 (IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics)
[Paper]


The rest of papers



 Teaching


UCSC:
CSE 232: Distributed Systems
   S'24

CSE 113: Parallel and Concurrent Programming
   F'24

UCR:
CS 160: Concurrent Programming and Parallel Systems
   F'22

CS 179E: Project in Computer Science
   Su'22

CS 247: Principles of Distributed Computing  
   F'23

CS 246: Software Verification
   W'22

CS 260: Seminar in Program Synthesis
   F'17

CS 260: Seminar in Distributed Computing
   S'19


 Service


PLDI '25, PC (ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Program Committee)

DISC '24, PC (The International Symposium on DIStributed Computing, Program Committee)

CCS '24, PC (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Program Committee)

S&P '24, OC (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Organizing Committee, Short Talks Chair)

ASIACCS '24, PC (
ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Program Committee), round 1

PLDI '23, PC (ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Program Committee)

POPL '23, PC (ACM
SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Program Committee)

CCS '22, OC (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Organizing Committee, Grant chair)

AFT '22, PC (ACM conference on Advances in Financial Technologies, Program Committee)

OOPSLA '21, PC (ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Program Committee)

OOPSLA '20, PC (ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Program Committee)

DisCoTec '20, PC (International Federated Conference on Distributed Computing Techniques, P
rogram Committee)

POPL '20, PC (ACM
SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Program Committee)

ECOOP '18, PC (European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Program Committee)


POPL '17, ERC (ACM Principles of Programming Languages 2017, External Review Committee)


CPP '17, PC (ACM Certified Programs and Proofs 2017, Program Committee)



 Team
 
We work together at the Safe and Secure Software (S3) lab.

Xiao
Xiao Li
     PhD student
     Primary publications: CAV ’20S&P ’22 DISC '23 DISC '24
Eric Chan
Eric Chan
     PhD student
     Primary publications: PODC ’21CSF '23
Javad
Javad Saber-Latibari
     PhD student
     Primary publications: PLDI ’22

Photo to appear here.
Tejas Mane
     PhD student
     Primary publications:

 
 Other


I am from the beautiful city of Kerman where the Prince's Garden [1, 2] is located.
My PhD hooding at UCLA.
I tried acting and played John J. Astor in Titanic the musical
. Can you find me in the cast?
We won the best costume award in a Halloween party at MIT.
I try to keep the positive feedbacks that we get.
The names of our papers.