I’m an Assistant Professor in EECS at UC Berkeley. My research aims to make program optimization more robust, powerful, and accessible. Along the way, I use techniques from programming languages, databases, and systems.

Check out these pages for info on my current projects:

• The egg project uses e-graphs to build new kinds of program optimizers.
  • See also the GitHub pages for egg and egglog.
• The EGRAPHS Community, a community for e-graphs researchers consisting of a forum, a workshop, and a monthly seminary series.

News

• 2025.03

  I am co-organizing a Dagstuhl Seminar on the use of e-graphs in compilation.

• 2025.02

  Our POPL 2021 paper on the egg project was selected as a SIGPLAN Research Highlight!

• 2024.12

  EGRAPHS 2025, will take place at PLDI 2025 in Seoul!

• 2024.05

  Our SIGMOD paper unifying traditional hash joins with worst-case optimal joins was selected as a SIGMOD Record Research Highlight.

• 2024.01

  I’ve started as an Assistant Professor position at EECS at UC Berkeley!

Teaching

• Spring 2025 CS 164: Programming Languages and Compilers
• Fall 2024 CS 265: Compiler Optimization
• Spring 2024 CS 294-260: Declarative Program Analysis and Optimization

Papers

• Database Theory in Action: Search-based Program Optimization

  • Yihong Zhang
  • Dan Suciu
  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  ICDT 2025, DBT in Action Track, May 2024

• Free Join: Unifying Worst-Case Optimal and Traditional Joins

  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  • Dan Suciu
  SIGMOD Record 2024, April 2024
  SIGMOD Record Research Highlight of our Free Join paper

• Equality Saturation Theory Exploration à la Carte

  • Anjali Pal
  • Brett Saiki
  • Ryan Tjoa
  • Cynthia Richey
  • Amy Zhu
  • Oliver Flatt
  • Max Willsey
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Chandrakana Nandi
  OOPSLA 2023, October 2023

• Better Together: Unifying Datalog and Equality Saturation

  • Yihong Zhang
  • Remy Wang
  • Oliver Flatt
  • David Cao
  • Philip Zucker
  • Eli Rosenthal
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Max Willsey
  PLDI 2023, June 2023
  Selected for MIT PL Review 2024

• Free Join: Unifying Worst-Case Optimal and Traditional Joins

  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  • Dan Suciu
  SIGMOD 2023, January 2023
  Selected as a SIGMOD Record Research Highlight

• babble: Learning Better Abstractions with E-Graphs and Anti-Unification

  • David Cao
  • Rose Kunkel
  • Chandrakana Nandi
  • Max Willsey
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Nadia Polikarpova
  POPL 2023, January 2023

• Small Proofs from Congruence Closure

  • Oliver Flatt
  • Sam Coward
  • Max Willsey
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Pavel Panchekha
  FMCAD 2022, September 2022

• Virtualizing Existing Fluidic Programs

  • Caleb Winston
  • Max Willsey
  • Luis Ceze
  ACM JETC, August 2022

• Co-Optimization of Design and Fabrication Plans for Carpentry

  • Haisen Zhao
  • Max Willsey
  • Amy Zhu
  • Chandrakana Nandi
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Justin Solomon
  • Adriana Schulz
  ACM TOG, March 2022

• Relational E-Matching

  • Yihong Zhang
  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  • Zachary Tatlock
  POPL 2022, January 2022

• Rewrite Rule Inference Using Equality Saturation

  • Chandrakana Nandi
  • Max Willsey
  • Amy Zhu
  • Remy Wang
  • Brett Saiki
  • Adam Anderson
  • Adriana Schulz
  • Dan Grossman
  • Zachary Tatlock
  OOPSLA 2021, August 2021
  Distinguished Paper

• Equality Saturation for Tensor Graph Superoptimization

  • Yichen Yang
  • Phitchaya Mangpo Phothilimthana
  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  • Sudip Roy
  • Jacques Pienaar
  MLSys 2021, January 2021

• egg: Fast and Extensible E-graphs

  • Max Willsey
  • Remy Wang
  • Oliver Flatt
  • Chandrakana Nandi
  • Zachary Tatlock
  • Pavel Panchekha
  POPL 2021, January 2021
  Distinguished Paper, SIGPLAN Research Highlight

• PurpleDrop: A Digital Microfluidics-based Platform for Hybrid Molecular-Electronics Applications

  • Ashley Stephenson
  • Max Willsey
  • Jeff McBride
  • Sharon Newman
  • Bichlien Nguyen
  • Chris Takahashi
  • Karin Strauss
  • Luis Ceze
  IEEE Micro 2020, July 2020

• Synthesizing Structured CAD Models with Equality Saturation and Inverse Transformations

  • Chandrakana Nandi
  • Max Willsey
  • Adam Anderson
  • James Wilcox
  • Eva Darulova
  • Dan Grossman
  • Zachary Tatlock
  PLDI 2020, March 2020

• Scaling Microfluidics to Complex, Dynamic Protocols

  • Max Willsey
  • Ashley Stephenson
  • Chris Takahashi
  • Bichlien Nguyen
  • Karin Strauss
  • Luis Ceze
  ICCAD 2019, November 2019
  Invited Paper

• High Density DNA Data Storage Library via Dehydration with Digital Microfluidic Retrieval

  • Sharon Newman
  • Ashley Stephenson
  • Max Willsey
  • Bichlien Nguyen
  • Chris Takahashi
  • Karin Strauss
  • Luis Ceze
  Nature Communications, April 2019

• Puddle: A Dynamic, Error-Correcting, Full-Stack Microfluidics Platform

  • Max Willsey
  • Ashley Stephenson
  • Chris Takahashi
  • Pranav Vaid
  • Bichlien Nguyen
  • Michal Piszczek
  • Christine Betts
  • Sharon Newman
  • Sarang Joshi
  • Karin Strauss
  • Luis Ceze
  ASPLOS 2019, April 2019

• DNA Data Storage and Hybrid Molecular–Electronic Computing

  • Douglas Carmean
  • Luis Ceze
  • Georg Seelig
  • Callie Bee
  • Karin Strauss
  • Max Willsey
  Proceedings of the IEEE, January 2019
  Invited paper

• Iterative Search for Reconfigurable Accelerator Blocks with a Compiler in the Loop

  • Max Willsey
  • Vincent Lee
  • Alvin Cheung
  • Ras Bodik
  • Luis Ceze
  IEEE TCAD, October 2018

• Design and Implementation of Concurrent C0

  • Max Willsey
  • Rokhini Prabhu
  • Frank Pfenning
  Fourth International Workshop on Linearity, June 2016

• Design and Implementation of Concurrent C0

  • Max Willsey
  Senior Honors Thesis, May 2016
  Designated as Exemplary Thesis by the senior thesis award committee