Konstantin Läufer
Professor of of Computer Science
Software and Systems Laboratory
Loyola University Chicago
About
Hello and welcome! Sali und wöllkomm zäme! ¡Hola y bienvenidos/as! Ciao e benvenuti/e!
Brief bio
I am a professor of computer science at Loyola University Chicago. I majored in physics at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and attended Rutgers University, New Jersey, as an exchange student. Prior to joining Loyola in 1992, I earned a PhD in computer science from the Courant Institute at New York University under the supervision of Benjamin F. Goldberg and Martin Odersky.
My research and teaching interests include programming languages, software architecture, distributed and pervasive computing systems, and data engineering, as well as applications in environmental sustainability and other areas of social justice. I’m affiliated with the Software and Systems Laboratory (SSL), an environment for computer systems and applied software engineering research. My research has been funded by government agencies and corporations. I’m a co-inventor on two patents owned by Lucent Technologies, where I was a research consultant (1996-2000).
I also served in various administrative roles, including associate dean of the graduate school (2005-06), department chair (2012-2018), and graduate program director (2019-20).
Hobbies
Music (saxophone), trail running (non-ultra), strength training, soccer, hiking, nordic skiing, sailing, traveling (especially scenic driving on unpaved backroads leading to remote trailheads and campsites), current affairs, movies.
Languages
eng/spa/deu/gsw/ita
Interests
- Programming Languages
- Software Architecture
- Mobile and Pervasive Computing
- Data Engineering
Education
PhD in Computer Science, 1992
New York University
MS in Computer Science, 1989
New York University
Vordiplom in Physics, 1984
University of Konstanz
Teaching
Spring 2025 (tentative)
- COMP 141: Introduction to Computing Tools and Techniques
- COMP 335/488-001: Formal Methods in Software Engineering
Fall 2024
- COMP 371/471: Theory (and Practice) of Programming Languages
- Tue 16:15-18:45 LSC
- Sakai site
- Syllabus
- COMP 373/473: Advanced Object-Oriented Programming
- Thu 16:15-18:45 LSC
- Sakai site
- Syllabus
- Office hour:
- Tue/Thu 19:00-19:30 (after class - no appointment required)
- Wed/Fri TBD (please use Calendly to make an appointment)
Code examples
Past courses
- COMP 271: Data Structures I
- COMP 313/413: Intermediate Object-Oriented Programming
- COMP 335/488-001: Formal Methods in Software Engineering
- COMP 370/470: Software Quality
Research
Active projects
- UnoAPI: Curricular modules for high-performance computing using data-parallel C++ with Intel’s OneAPI.
- Metrics Project: Longitudinal process quality metrics for software development, including
- SparkBadge: Longitudinal project status badges.
- Test Effectiveness: Metrics for testing techniques and practices.
- DriveAware: Generating actionable data on social justice issues through vehicle-based citizen science.
- Doyle Living Systems Lab (incubation): Smart spaces using open-source software and hardware.
- Loyola42ndParallel (incubation): A data-driven view of sustainability and other social justice challenges along the 42nd parallel, which runs not only through Chicago but also through Loyola University Chicago’s main campus.
Service
Current program committees
- EduHPC-24: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing
- 19th International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2024)
- 24th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGRID’2024)
- 9th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Systems (DSS-2023)
Publications
Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2023).
New technologies as decision aids for the advancement of ecological risk assessment.
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management — Volume 19, Number 5—pp. 1168–1171.
(2022).
UnoAPI: Balancing Performance, Portability, and Productivity (P3) in HPC Education.
Proc. EduHPC-22: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing.
(2022).
Snapshot Metrics Are Not Enough: Analyzing Software Repositories with Longitudinal Metrics (Tool Demonstration).
Proceedings of the 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering.
(2021).
Learning Test-Driven Development.
O’Reilly Media, Inc..
(2021).
Metrics Pipeline (Codename): An Analytics and Visualization Pipeline for Software Quality Metrics (Poster).
Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium.
(2020).
Toward a containerized pipeline for longitudinal analysis of open-source software projects (Poster).
Graduate Research Symposium.
(2019).
Tests as Maintainable Assets via Auto-Generated Spies: A Case Study Involving the Scala Collections Library's Iterator Trait.
Proceedings of the Tenth ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Scala.
(2018).
Managing Concurrency in Mobile User Interfaces with Examples in Android.
Topics in Parallel and Distributed Computing.
(2017).
Experiences with Scala Across the College-Level Curriculum (Invited Talk).
Scala Days.
(2016).
A Polyglot Approach to Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis of HIV-1.
Evolutionary Bioinformatics.
(2015).
Middleware for Collaborative Distributed/Mobile Applications: XMPP or Reactive HTTP? (Poster).
Proc. 4th Greater Chicago Area System Research Workshop (GCASR), Chicago, Illinois.
(2015).
A Framework Architecture for Student Learning in Distributed Embedded Systems.
10th IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Embedded Systems (SIES).
(2015).
Towards Sustainable Digital Humanities Software.
Proc. Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE).
(2014).
Scala for Introductory CS and Parallelism (Workshop).
45th ACM technical symposium / Computer science education (SIGCSE ‘14).
(2013).
Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization and Sensing Clusters from Commodity Tablets (Poster).
Proc. 4th Greater Chicago Area System Research Workshop (GCASR), Chicago, Illinois.
(2013).
Network Technologies Used to Aggregate Environmental Data (Poster).
Proc. 2nd Greater Chicago Area System Research Workshop (GCASR), Chicago, Illinois.
(2013).
Using Scala strategically across the undergraduate curriculum (Workshop).
44th ACM technical symposium / Computer science education (SIGCSE ‘13).
(2012).
Early Adopter Report: PDC Modules for Every Level: A Comprehensive Model for Incorporating PDC Topics into the Existing Undergraduate Curriculum (Poster).
2nd NSF/IEEE-CS TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar), Shanghai, China.
(2012).
Simplifying Domain Modeling and Memory Management in User-Mode Filesystems with the NOFS Framework.
International Conference on Electro Information Technology 2012.
(2011).
PDC Modules for Every Level: A Comprehensive Model for Incorporating PDC Topics into the Existing Undergraduate Curriculum.
1st NSF/IEEE-CS TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar), Anchorage, Alaska.
(2011).
Initial experience in moving key academic department functions to social networking sites.
ICSOFT 2011 - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, Volume 1, Seville, Spain, 18-21 July, 2011.
(2011).
Moving Academic Department Functions to Social Networks and Clouds: Initial Experiences.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2011).
REST on Routers? Preliminary Lessons for Language Designers, Framework Architects, and App Developers.
ICSOFT 2011 - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, Volume 1, Seville, Spain, 18-21 July, 2011.
(2011).
RestFS: Resources are Filesystems, too.
Second International Workshop / RESTful Design (WS-REST ‘11).
(2011).
RestFS: The Filesystem as a Connector Abstraction for Flexible Resource and Service Composition.
Cloud Computing: Methodology, System, and Applications.
(2010).
Online Layered File System (OLFS): A layered and versioned filesystem and performance analysis.
IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology (EIT 2010).
(2010).
Virtualization for Computational Scientists.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2009).
Essential Tools: Version Control Systems.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2009).
GroupSpeak: High-level Language Extension for Workflow Capability.
IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ICWS 2009, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 6-10 July 2009.
(2009).
Putting a Slug to Work.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2009).
Scientific Programming: The Promises of Typed, Pure, and Lazy Functional Programming: Part II.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2008).
A Stroll through Domain-Driven Development with Naked Objects.
Comput. Sci. Eng..
(2008).
Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation.
Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering (SEKE'2008), San Francisco, CA, USA, July 1-3, 2008.
(2008).
Taming XML: Objects First, Then Markup.
IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology (EIT 2008).
(2008).
What I Did on My Summer Vacation.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2007).
A Hike through a Post-EJB J2EE Web Application Architecture, Part III.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2007).
A Model-Driven Approach to Job/Task Composition in Cluster Computing.
2007 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.
(2006).
A Hike through Post-EJB J2EE Web Application Architecture, Part II.
Comput. Sci. Eng..
(2006).
Unit Testing Considered Useful.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2005).
A hike through post-EJB J2EE Web application architecture.
Comput. Sci. Eng..
(2004).
Natural XML for Data Binding, Processing, and Persistence.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2004).
Plone and Content Management.
Computing in Science and Engineering.
(2003).
Mockup Supporting Web Requirements Engineering.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet Computing, IC ‘03, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 23-26, 2003, Volume 2.
(2000).
A Constraint-Based Framework for Prototyping Distributed Virtual Applications.
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2000, 6th International Conference, Singapore, September 18-21, 2000, Proceedings.
(2000).
Automated systematic testing for constraint-based interactive services.
ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, an Diego, California, USA, November 6-10, 2000, Proceedings.
(2000).
Safe Structural Conformance for Java.
Comput. J..
(2000).
Sisl: Several Interfaces, Single Logic.
Int. J. Speech Technol..
(2000).
The Triveni project.
ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes.
(1998).
Interaction, Concurrency, and OOP in the Curriculum: a Sophomore Course.
Proc. OOPSLA 1998 Educators’ Symposium.
(1998).
Design and Implementation of Triveni: A Process-Algebraic API for Threads + Events.
Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference on Computer Languages, ICCL 1998, Chicago, IL, USA, May 14-16, 1998.
(1998).
Objects and Concurrency in Triveni: A Telecommunication Case Study in Java.
4th USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS), April 27-30, 1998, Eldorado Hotel, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
(1998).
The Semantics of Triveni: A Process-Algebraic API for Threads + Events.
Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci..
(1996).
Putting Type Annotations to Work.
Conference Record of POPL'96: The 23rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Papers Presented at the Symposium, St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, USA, January 21-24, 1996.
(1996).
Type Classes with Existential Types.
J. Funct. Program..
(1995).
Interactive Web Applications Based on Finite State Machines (Invited Talk).
Proc. Symp. Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS).
(1995).
A Framework for Higher-Order Functions in C++.
Proceedings of the USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies, COOTS'95, Monterey, California, USA, June 26-29, 1995.
(1994).
Combining Type Classes and Existential Types.
Proc. Latin American Informatics Conf. (PANEL).
(1994).
Polymorphic Type Inference and Abstract Data Types.
ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst..
(1993).
Self-Interpretation and Reflection in a Statically Typed Language.
Proc. OOPSLA Workshop on Reflection and Metalevel Architectures.
(1992).
An Extension of ML with First-Class Abstract Types.
Proc. ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML and its Applications.
(1991).
Programming with Structures, Functions, and Objects.
Proc. XVII Latin American Informatics Conference (PANEL ‘91).
(1991).
Type Classes are Signatures of Abstract Types.
Declarative Programming, Sasbachwalden 1991, PHOENIX Seminar and Workshop on Declarative Programming, Sasbachwalden, Black Forest, Germany, 18-22 November 1991.
(1987).
Cobra Address User Manual.
(1986).
Cobra Litsy User Manual.
Contact
- klaufer@luc.edu
- +1 773 508-3583
- Department of Computer Science, Loyola University Chicago, 1032 W Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60660-1537
- Enter Doyle Hall (1052 W Loyola Ave) and take the stairs to room 203 on the second floor
- by appointment (via Calendly)
- Book an appointment
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