Spotlight on Computer Science

Left to right: Jonah Weinbaum, Jeffrey Foster, and Dinghong Zhong working together on a computer.

Student highlight

Name: Jonah Weinbaum
Degree: Ph.D. in Computer Science
Faculty lab: Tufts University Programming Languages Research Group

What are you studying?
I study programming languages (PL) with my advisors Professor and Chair Jeffrey Foster and Assistant Professor Guannan Wei. My current focus is cybersecurity and quantum programming languages.

Why Tufts?
I originally applied for my Ph.D. seeking to work in cybersecurity and binary analysis. When I heard back from Tufts through my current advisor (Jeffrey Foster), he expressed that programming languages might be a more apt fit given my prior work and research. To me, this indicated that Tufts has a more holistic approach to research than other universities I applied to, as they saw their applicants and understood where they may best succeed.

Favorite thing about living in the Medford/Somerville and Boston area?
I spent the last 6 years living in a town with roughly 1 restaurant open past 9 p.m. It's quite nice to be able to eat late!

How has your time at Tufts impacted your career journey so far?
Through Tufts I've been given the opportunity to go to events and meet others in my field from across the country. I've gotten to learn from experts either at external events or professors who have been invited to speak at Tufts.

Best Tufts course you’ve taken so far?
Likely my Theory of Computation course. Not necessarily because of the course subject, but because it gave me the strongest sense of the humor and camraderie with other Tufts students.

Jonah Weinbaum (foreground) works with Professor Jeff Foster.

Faculty highlight: Professor and Chair Jeffrey Foster

The goal of Professor and Chair Jeffrey Foster's research is to develop fundamental new ways to make it easier to build more reliable, secure software. His research interests include programming languages, software engineering, and security. He is a member of TuPL, the programming languages research group at Tufts University, where researchers innovate new ways to think about programming. More specifically, the group does research in domain-specific programming languages (DSLs), program synthesis, language-based security, type systems, program verification, and more. Professor Foster is also a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.