Liam O'Connor [index]

I am a Senior Lecturer in Foundations at the Australian National University School of Computing, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. I'm also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, where I worked until 2024.
Lately, my research has been focused on property-based testing, semantics and temporal logic, but I have very broad research interests. See my personal bibliography for a full list of my work.
Previously, I lectured courses at UNSW Sydney, where I did my PhD with Gabriele Keller and the Trustworthy Systems Team lead by Gernot Heiser, focusing on the Cogent project.
Full details about me can be found on my curriculum vitæ, which includes a list of students. My contact details can be found here.
I'm also an experienced liturgical singer and cantor. I journal my experiences in church music at the Church Music Corner.
Work with me [loc-003Y]
I have PhD studentships available, and am always happy to chat about research. Feel free to reach out.
About this website [loc-000E]
This website is a "forest" created using the Forester tool, a system of evergreen hypertext notes developed by, among others, Jon Sterling and Kento Okura. To search my forest, press Ctrl+K.
Statement on LLMs [loc-003P]
I believe LLMs and related Generative AI technologies are, in almost all cases, spiritually harmful and detrimental to human flourishing. And if that isn't bad enough, most of these technologies are controlled by harmful companies and deeply immoral people who massively contribute to human exploitation and environmental degradation. I refuse to use, conduct research on, or consume the output of any such systems. If you send me AI slop, I do judge you and I will think less of you. I am not interested in hearing any excuses for using the technology ("I only use it for..", "But it's okay if.."). If you feel compelled to say something like this to me, this is probably because deep down you know these technologies are harmful, both to you and to those around you, but you want to feel okay about how you use them. I will not grant you absolution. I do not use this technology, and neither should you.
Lecture notes
News [news]
See also Weeknotes
| 26.07.19 | I have agreed to teach my Interactive theorem proving course at the Logic Summer School in December this year. |
|---|---|
| 26.06.10 | I have accepted an invitation to serve on the PC of TFPIE '27: 16th International Workshop on Trends in Functional Programming in Education. |
| 26.03.01 | Kai Phan starts her PhD this week, and Edwin Park starts his honours project. |
| 26.02.20 | I have accepted an invitation to serve on the PC of POPL ’27: 54th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. |
| 26.01.16 | My student Kai Phan will start her PhD with me this semester. |
| 26.01.15 | I have agreed to join the supervision panel for Fabian Mühlböck's student, Carlo Zancanaro. |
| 25.12.17 | I have agreed to join the supervision panel for Nisansala Yatapanage's student, Ali Nosherwan Hamed. |
| 25.12.01 | My course on Interactive theorem proving is running this week. |
| 25.09.19 | I have agreed to teach COMP1110 Structured Programming in 2026 Semester 1. |
| 25.09.18 | I will be teaching at the ANU Logic Summer School 2025 this December. |
| 25.09.12 | I have been made a member of IFIP Working Group 2.1: Algorithmic Languages and Calculi. |
| 25.09.08 | The ICFP '25 Programming Contest has successfully concluded. |
| 25.08.22 | Xin Lu starts her PhD with me and Peter Höfner today. |
| 25.07.22 | Selene's paper, Memory Safety: Uniqueness as Separation, has been accepted to APLAS '25: 23rd Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems! |
| 25.07.20 | Mio Wu and Josh Brown are starting their Honours projects with me this semester, working on the next generation of the Holbert proof assistant. |
| 25.05.30 | Xin Lu will be starting her PhD with me and Peter Höfner in a few months. |
| 25.05.16 | I have completed the domain theory lecture notes. |
| 25.05.01 | I have agreed to co-supervise Yi Yao, a new PhD student with Peter Höfner. |
| 25.03.22 | I have joined the PC for Haskell '25: 18th ACM SIGPLAN Haskell Symposium. |
| 25.03.13 | I have joined the PC for FProPer '25: 2nd ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Functional Programming for Productivity and Performance. |
| 25.02.04 | Jack Bashford has joined me for a semester project working on Holbert. |
| 25.01.08 | I have joined the PC for APLAS '25: 23rd Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems. |
| 24.11.05 | I have joined the PC for ICFP '25: 29th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming. |
| 24.10.22 | I have joined the PC for PLDI '25: 46th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation. |
| 24.09.17 | I have agreed to organise the ICFP '25 Programming Contest. |
| 24.09.30 | I was delighted to spend a week with the WG2.1 folks here at the ANU. |
| 24.09.09 | Our student Rayhana Amjad has published her first paper, Semantics for Linear-time Temporal Logic with Finite Observations at EXPRESS/SOS. |
| 24.07.30 | I have taken a new position as a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. |