Dr. Oliver Bračevac

Compiler Engineer • Programming Languages Researcher • Scala Contributor

I am a researcher and compiler engineer working on programming languages. My present focus is on type systems for effects, capabilities, and resources. The goal is static reasoning that makes programs safer without making them harder to write.

I lead the compiler team at EPFL LAMP, Martin Odersky’s group, where I work on Scala 3 full-time. I serve on Scala’s core team and chair the Scala Improvement Process. On the research side, a lot of what I work on ends up in the compiler.

Before EPFL, I worked with Galois, Inc. on DARPA-funded projects in verification and memory-safe programming languages. Before that, I was a postdoc at Purdue with Tiark Rompf, where we worked on reachability types, high-performance symbolic execution, and graph IRs for impure functional languages. I did my PhD at TU Darmstadt with Mira Mezini on algebraic effect handlers for reactive and stream-based systems.

I started my career as a systems and software engineer, which I like to think keeps me honest.

News

Mar 3, 2026 New draft: Making agents safe with Scala 3 capturing types.
Aug 13, 2025 What’s in the Box? A major milestone for Scala Capture Checking, accepted at OOPSLA 2025!

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