I’m a post-doctoral researcher in computer science at the University of Washington.

In January 2024, I will start as an Assistant Professor in EECS at UC Berkeley.

My current focus is egg, a toolkit for program optimization and synthesis powered by e-graphs and equality saturation. We’ve applied it to some really fun domains like improving floating point accuracy, shrinking 3D models, and linear algebra optimization.

During my PhD (also at UW), I worked mostly in programming languages (PLSE group). I also enjoyed collaborating with friends in molecular systems (MISL), where I worked on programming models for microfluidic chips.

News

• 2023.06

  I’ve accepted an Assistant Professor position at EECS at UC Berkeley. I’ll start in 2024.

• 2023.06

  The second EGRAPHS workshop, EGRAPHS 2023, will take place at PLDI 2023 in Orlando!

• 2023.04

  Our work connecting egg to Datalog will appear at PLDI 2023.

• 2023.01

  Our paper unifying traditional hash joins with worst-case optimal joins will appear at SIGMOD ‘23.

• 2023.01

  Our POPL 2023 paper shows how to use e-graph anti-unification to learn library functions from a body of code.

• 2022.01

  The inaugural EGRAPHS workshop at PLDI 2022 was a big hit!

• 2021.10

  Our paper on inferring rewrites using equality saturation was a Distinguished Paper at OOPSLA 2021.

• 2021.09

  Our paper connecting e-matching to relational databases was (conditionally) accepted to POPL 2022.

• 2021.05

  I defended my PhD! You can find my thesis here. I’ll be staying on as a postdoc to work on egg and related projects.

• 2021.04

  I wrote a post on the SIGPLAN blog about egg.

• 2021.01

  Our paper applying egg to deep learning graph rewriting will appear at MLSys 2021.

• 2020.10

  Our paper on egg will appear at POPL 2021 as a Distinguished Paper!
  Check out the 5 min or 30 min video talks.

Papers

• 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

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

  • Remy Wang
  • Max Willsey
  • Dan Suciu
  SIGMOD 2023, January 2023

• 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

• 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