Patricia Johann

Contact Information:
Department of Computer Science
Belk Hall 312M
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA

phone: (828) 262 7008
email: johannp *at* appstate.edu

Ph.D. (Mathematics), Wesleyan University, 1991
B.A. (Mathematics), Reed College, 1985

[BIO] | [PUBLICATIONS] | [TEACHING] | [BOOK] | [GRANTS]

I am a (Full) Professor in the Computer Science Department at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where I do research and teach a variety of computer science courses. I am spending most of a leave of absence in AY 2021-2022 visiting the Logic and Semantics Group at the Computer Science Department at Aarhus University in Denmark. Before coming to Appalachian State University, I was a Reader (US equivalent: Professor) of Computer Science in the Mathematically Structured Programming group in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. While there I spent part of a sabbatical in 2012 at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. (Bio continues here.)

Links to references and slides for OPLSS'21 course.
Material for OPLSS '16.

Current professional activities:

Member-at-large on steering committee of TyDE.

Previous professional activities:

Program committee member for Haskell Symposium 2025.
Co-organizer of the Special Session on Proof Assistants at the May 2025 North American Annual Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic in Las Cruces, NM.
Program committee member for LICS 2025.
Program committee member for MFPS 2024.
Program committee member for TYPES 2024 .
Program committee member for ICFP 2024.
Program committee member for FLOPS 2024.
Program committee member for CALCO 2023.
Program committee member for TFP 2023.
Program committee member for PADL 2023.
Program committee member for POPL 2023.
Program committee member for MPC 2022.
Program committee member for FSCD 2022.
Program committee member for FoSSaCS 2022.
Panelist at PLMW@ICFP 2021.
Program committee member for MFPS 2021.
Program commitee member for the 2021 Haskell Symposium.
Program committee member for TyDe 2021.
Program committee member for ICFP 2021.
Invited Lecturer for OPLSS 2021.
Invited Lecturer, OPLSS 2020. (Cancelled due to COVID-19)
Program committee member for LOLA 2020.
Program committee chair for MFPS 2020.
Program committee member for FSCD 2020 .
I visited Steve Awodey and gave a talk on higher-kinded data types at Carnegie Mellon University 4-7 December 2019.
I visited Chris Martens and gave a talk on parametricity at NC State University 19-21 September 2019.
Program committee co-chair for LOLA 2019.
Program committee member for FoSSaCS 2019.
Program committee member for the Student Research Competition at POPL 2019.
Program committee member for POPL 2019.
Program committee member for TFP 2018.
Program committee member for MFPS 2018.
Program committee co-chair for LOLA 2018.
Program committee member for TFP 2017 and the associated TFP post-proceedings.
Program committee member for TyDe 2017.
Program committee member for LOLA 2017.
Program committee member for PPDP 2017.
Program committee member for TFPiE 2016.
Program committee member for IFL 2016.
Program committee member for CoALP-Ty 2016.
Invited Lecturer, OPLSS 2016.
External Review Committee for POPL 2016.
Program committee member for the 2015 Haskell Symposium.
Program committee member for the 2015 ML Workshop.
I gave a keynote talk at the 2014 Haskell Symposium ([slides] [video]).
Program committee member for IFL 2014.
Program committee member for POPL 2015.
Program committee member for ICFP 2014.
Program committee member for HOPE 2013.
Organizer of a small Parametricity Workshop on 22 May 2013.
Program committee member for MFPS XXIX.
Program committee member for LICS 2013.
Program committee member for FoSSaCS 2013.
Program committee member for TFP 2012.
I gave an invited talk on lifting functors in fibrations at MFPS XXVIII in June 2012.
Co-organizer (with Greg Michaelson) of the Celebration of 75 Years of Lambda Calculus.
Organizer of a small Parametricity Workshop on 2 May 2012.
Program committee member for CMCS 2012.
External review committee member for POPL 2012.
I also served as Associate Editor of Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation for several years.
and much, much more through the years...

My research is supported by NSF awards 2203217 and 1906388. Additional research support has been provided by these grants.

Postdoctoral Researchers:

Thanks to the NSF, Dr. Ed Morehouse was a postdoc with me from 3 September 2024 to 28 February 2025. We worked together on deep induction for GADTs and inductive families.
Thanks to the NSF, Dr. Pierre Cagne was a postdoc with me from 1 March 2022 to 31 July 2025. Weworked together on semantics of term- and type-indexed data types, particularly of GADTs. We also worked together on this topic during our 6-month research visit to Aarhus University from 1 August 2021 to 31 January 2022. Pierre is now an assistant professor at Appalachian State University.
Thanks to the NSF, Dr. Enrico Ghiorzi was a postdoc with me from 7 October 2019 to 30 June 2021. We worked together on parametricity for advanced data types. Enrico is now a postdoctoral researcher at Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia.
Thanks to the NSF and Appalachian State University, Dr. Andrew Polonsky was a postdoc with me from 7 January 2018 to 31 July 2019. We worked together on locally presentable categories and on syntax and semantics of GADTs. Andrew is now an assistant professor at Appalachian State University.
Thanks to the NSF and Appalachian State University, Dr. Kristina Sojakova was a postdoc with me from 6 June 2016 to 5 December 2017. We worked together on higher-dimensional parametricity. Kristina is now an assistant professor at Vrije Universiteit Amterdam.
Thanks to the NSF and Appalachian State University, Dr. Clément Aubert was a postdoc with me from 1 October 2015 to 31 July 2017. We worked together on fibrational models of parametricity for effects. Clément is now an assistant professor at Augusta University.

PhD Students:

Federico Orsanigo began his PhD studies with me at Strathclyde in October 2012, but completed under the direction of Neil Ghani after I moved back to the US.
Clément Fumex began a PhD under my supervision at Strathclyde on 1 February 2009. He worked on fibrational approaches to induction. He successfully defended his dissertation on 1 June 2012, with Neil Ghani as second supervisor, Bart Jacobs as external examiner, and Conor McBride as internal examiner.

Master's Students:

Daniel Jeffries successfully defended his Master's thesis entitled Towards Formalizing Parametricity for Nested Types in Agda on 30 June 2021. He was awarded AppState's Domer Research Award in 2021.

Graduate Research Students:

Ben Lenox
Sam Arkle

Undergraduate Research Students:

Sam Arkle
Daniel Jeffries
Austin Keener
Andrew Castellano
Chris Savcak
Tatsiana Sulkovskaya
Jon Pospischil

Jon, Chris, and Drew won Dean's Undergraduate Research awards in 2005, 2006, and 2008, respectively, for their work on projects I have supervised (abstracts of Jon and Chris linked above).