Dr. Oliver Bračevac

Compiler Engineer • Programming Languages Researcher • Scala Contributor

I am working on Scala 3, particularly practical and ergonomic effect systems.

I lead the compiler team of Martin Odersky’s EPFL LAMP lab, serve on Scala’s core team, and chair the Scala Improvement Process.

My general interests are programming languages, compilers, formal methods, and formal verification. More details are available in my (somewhat outdated) research statement:

[Research Statement]    [Teaching Statement]

Previously, I worked with Galois, Inc. on DARPA projects, including user-friendly verification tools for C (PROVERS) and memory-safe imperative functional programming languages (V-SPELLS).

Before that, I was a postdoc at Purdue, PurPL, working with Tiark Rompf on Scala LMS, high-performance symbolic execution, and ownership type systems for Scala-like languages.

I earned my PhD from TU Darmstadt under the guidance of Mira Mezini, researching effect handlers for reactive and stream-based systems.

Earlier in my career, I worked as a systems and software engineer in the IT/telco industry.

News

Aug 13, 2025 What’s in the Box? A major milestone for Scala Capture Checking, accepted at OOPSLA 2025!
Jun 20, 2025 Honored to be the next chair of the Scala Improvement Process starting this fall.

Selected Publications

  1. OOPSLA
    What’s in the Box: Ergonomic and Expressive Capture Tracking over Generic Data Structures
    Yichen Xu, Oliver Bračevac, Nguyen Pham, and Martin Odersky. 2025 PDF
  2. POPL
    Polymorphic Reachability Types: Tracking Freshness, Aliasing, and Separation in Higher-Order Generic Programs
    Guannan Wei, Oliver Bračevac, Songlin Jia, Yuyan Bao, and Tiark Rompf. 2024 PDF
  3. OOPSLA
    Graph IRs for Impure Higher-Order Languages: Making Aggressive Optimizations Affordable with Precise Effect Dependencies
    Oliver Bračevac, Guannan Wei, Songlin Jia, Supun Abeysinghe, Luke Jiang, Yuyan Bao, and Tiark Rompf. 2023 PDF
  4. ICSE
    Compiling Parallel Symbolic Execution with Continuations
    Guannan Wei, Songlin Jia, Ruiqi Gao, Haotian Deng, Shangyin Tan, Oliver Bračevac, and Tiark Rompf. 2023 PDF
  5. ECOOP
    What If We Don’t Pop the Stack? The Return of 2nd-Class Values
    Anxhelo Xhebraj, Oliver Bračevac, Guannan Wei, and Tiark Rompf. 2022 PDF
  6. OOPSLA
    Compiling Symbolic Execution with Staging and Algebraic Effects
    Guannan Wei, Oliver Bračevac, Shangyin Tan, and Tiark Rompf. 2020 PDF
  7. ICFP
    Versatile Event Correlation with Algebraic Effects
    Oliver Bračevac, Nada Amin, Guido Salvaneschi, Sebastian Erdweg, Patrick Eugster, and Mira Mezini. 2018 PDF