Peter-Michael Osera

Associate Professor, Chair
Department of Computer Science
Grinnell College
osera@cs.grinnell.edu
CVDBLPGithub

My mission is to help people harness the power of computation in its many forms, in particular, through computer programming. I accomplish this through two paths:

I co-lead the Systems and Languages @ Grinnell (SL@G) group at Grinnell with Charlie Curtsinger where we investigate problems at the intersection of systems, programming languages, human-computing interaction, and computer science education. I also collaborate with the Laboratory for Molecular Programming (LAMP) at Iowa State University. My work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation through EAGER, CAREER, and FMiTF awards.

Research

Grinnell students: check out my MAP page for information about joining my research group!
Foundations of Program Synthesis We investigate mathematical foundations for program synthesis that encompass the wide variety of "synthesis-like" activities sturied in programming language theory such as auto-completion, type inference, implicit argument inference, and proof search.
Molecular Programming We develop programming language abstractions for molecular programming where chemical reactions rather than electrical signals are used as the substrate for computing.
Mathematics Education in Computer Science We investigate how programming language theory can motivate and support mathematics education in computer science.

Teaching

I am teaching the following courses during the Fall 2024 semester:

Prior Course Websites

I maintain archives of my course materials below. If you are a prior student and need access to materials specific to your course offering, feel free to get in touch!

(Note: links within the course pages are broken—fixes are forthcoming!)

Contact

For college business, general questions, business inquiries, etc., please contact me via email: Note that I try to limit my email processing to the beginning and the end of the day, so please do not expect an immediate response during the day.
Office Hours I'm regularly in the office, Science 2811, most days of the week. If my door is open, feel free to stop by! I am also available via appointment if you have course content, career, or advising questions. Schedule a meeting with me via my Bookings page:
Letters of Recommendation If you would like me to write a letter of recommendation for you, please fill out my letter request form, and I'll get back to you promptly. If you no longer have a Grinnell email to access the form, feel free to contact me via email!