Anil Madhavapeddy is the Professor of Planetary Computing at the Department of Computer Science and Technology in the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, a Fellow of

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

, and a J M Keynes Fellow. He is the Founding Director of the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits, aiming to distribute funds raised through the sale of carbon credits in a verifiable manner.

Education

Madhavapeddy graduated from

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

in 1999, and obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the

in 2006 for research on

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s and

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

supervised by

Andy Hopper Sir Andrew Hopper (born 9 May 1953) is a British-Polish computer technologist and entrepreneur. He is Chairman of lowRISC CIC, a Commissioner of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, former Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal S ...

and David Greaves.

Research and Teaching

Madhavapeddy is the author of Real World OCaml, the second edition of which was published in Oct 2022 by

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, with an earlier edition in 2013 by

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media, Inc. (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via an online learning platform. O'Reilly also publishes b ...

. RWO has been used as a text in computer science courses such as

Princeton Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the Unit ...

’s COS326,

Cornell Cornell University is a private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson White in 1865. Since ...

’s CS6110 and

UPenn The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of founder and first pre ...

’s CIS 120. At Cambridge, Anil teaches the Foundations of Computer Science course in the

Computer Science Tripos The Computer Science Tripos (CST) is the undergraduate course in computer science offered by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. It evolved out of the Diploma in Computer Science, the world's first taught course in computer science, ...

which introduces

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declarat ...

. Past lecturers of this course include

Lawrence Paulson Lawrence Charles Paulson is an American computer scientist. He is a Professor of Computational Logic at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Education Paulson graduated from the California ...

Alan Mycroft Alan Mycroft is a professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, where he is also director of studies for computer science. Education Mycroft read mathematics at Cambridge then moved ...

and Amanda Prorok. Madhavapeddy primarily researches

programming languages A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features ...

and

. He is one of the main creators of

unikernel A unikernel is a type of computer program that is static linking, statically linked with the operating system code on which it depends. Unikernels are built with a specialized compiler that identifies the operating system services that a program ...

library operating systems, and has researched parallelism and

effect systems In computing, an effect system is a formal system that describes the computational effects of computer programs, such as side effects. An effect system can be used to provide a compile-time check of the possible effects of the program. The effect ...

for functional languages such as

OCaml OCaml ( , formerly Objective Caml) is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, High-level programming language, high-level, Comparison of multi-paradigm programming languages, multi-paradigm programming language which extends the ...

. Madhavapeddy's latest project is a collaboration with

Srinivasan Keshav Srinivasan Keshav is a computer scientist who is currently the Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. Biography After undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1986, he received ...

and

Andrew Balmford Andrew Balmford is a professor of conservation science at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on planning conservation, comparing the costs and benefits of conservation and how conservation can be reconciled with other activities. ...

on verifiable

carbon credits Carbon offsetting is a carbon trading mechanism that enables entities to compensate for offset greenhouse gas emissions by investing in projects that reduce, avoid, or remove emissions elsewhere. When an entity invests in a carbon offsetting p ...

for

nature-based solutions Nature-based solutions (or nature-based systems, and abbreviated as NBS or NbS) describe the development and sustainable use, use of nature (biodiversity) and natural processes to address diverse social issue, socio-environmental issues. These is ...

, which has been seen as an alternative to cryptocurrency tokens

Industry

Madhavapeddy has made substantial contributions to open source software such as

MirageOS A unikernel is a type of computer program that is statically linked with the operating system code on which it depends. Unikernels are built with a specialized compiler that identifies the operating system services that a program uses and links ...

, Docker, Xen and

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

. He is currently a Council Member at the

Tezos Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez (ISO 4217: XTZ; sign: ). The Tezos network achieve ...

Foundation and the advisory board of OpenUK. He co-founded Unikernel Systems in 2015, which was acquired by Docker in 2016 where he served as a Docker maintainer, introducing technologies such as HyperKit, VPNKit and DataKit that made Docker for Desktop possible. Madhavapeddy has been a senior maintainer of

since 2011, where he helped develop the OCaml Package Manager, the tooling ecosystem, as well as support for multicore parallelism and effect handlers in OCaml 5.0. He has published over 150 software libraries for OCaml. He co-founded High Energy Magic Ltd in 2003 with

Eben Upton Eben Christopher Upton (born 5 April 1978) is the Welsh CEO of Raspberry Pi Holdings. He is responsible for the overall software and hardware architecture of the Raspberry Pi device. He is a former technical director and ASIC architect for B ...

and others, which was an early implementation of interactive barcodes in camera-phones and later commercialised as

ShotCode ShotCode is a circular barcode created by High Energy Magic of Cambridge University. It uses a dartboard-like circle, with a bullseye in the centre and ''datacircles'' surrounding it. The technology reads databits from the datacircles by measur ...

s. Madhavapeddy also served on the core team at the

Horde Horde may refer to: History * Orda (organization), a historic sociopolitical and military structure in steppe nomad cultures such as the Turks and Mongols ** Golden Horde, a Turkic-Mongol state established in the 1240s ** Wings of the Golden Hor ...

project from 1999 until 2008, where he helped develop the IMP webmail client and the

Chora Chora may refer to: Places Greece * Chora, old capital of the island of Alonnisos * Chora, village on the island of Folegandros * Chora, Ios, capital of the island of Ios * Chora, Messenia, a small town in Messenia in the Peloponnese * Chora, p ...

CVS viewer. He worked on the

Mars Polar Lander The Mars Polar Lander, also known as the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander, was a 290-kilogram uncrewed spacecraft lander launched by NASA on January 3, 1999, to study the soil and climate of Planum Australe, a region near the south pole on Mars. It fo ...

ground data systems in 1998 and subsequently at

NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in San Jose, California. It has ranked ...

to deploy early

content delivery networks A content delivery network (CDN) or content distribution network is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance ("speed") by distributing the service spatia ...

using

NetCache NetCache is a former web cache software product which was owned and developed by NetApp between 1997 and 2006, and a hardware product family incorporating the NetCache software. History The NetCache software started as a commercial fork of the H ...

External links

Personal website

University of Cambridge faculty page

Pembroke College faculty page

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Madhavapeddy, Anil Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Alumni of Imperial College London Alumni of the University of Cambridge Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge Irish computer scientists Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Computer systems researchers