Loris D’Antoni would happily eat pasta every day. After all, he’s a native Italian. He plays piano, saxophone, and drums to stretch his limits. He also performs magic, which is just for fun. And his career path, full of unexpected turns, has led him to the University of California San Diego, where most days he arrives by bike.
Associate Professor D’Antoni, who joined the Jacobs School of Engineering Department of Computer Science and Engineering in 2024, is originally from a small village in northern Italy called Sommariva del Bosco. He was the first in his family to attend college – a journey of roughly 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, from home to the Universitá di Torino.
“When I was in college, I didn’t even know academia was a possible career until a professor saw some potential in me and approached me. I think most academics who are first-generation students have a similar story,” said D’Antoni.
D’Antoni’s path had intersected with Mariangiola Dezani, a theoretical computer scientist and professor at the Universitá di Torino. She offered to mentor D’Antoni, advising him throughout his bachelor’s and master’s programs. Eventually, she introduced D’Antoni to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his doctorate in 2015.
D’Antoni’s research focuses on making it easier for people to write code that behaves as intended. Specifically, he develops formal techniques that can be combined with machine-learning approaches to automatically generate code that meets user-given properties. His goal is to help people who do not necessarily have a technical background write trustworthy software that does what they need.
“My work affects people directly, by empowering them to write code more efficiently. And it affects them indirectly, by allowing people to write code that has fewer bugs, preventing internet outages or websites not responding,” said D’Antoni.
Prior to coming to UC San Diego, D’Antoni was a faculty member at University of Wisconsin Madison for nine years. In 2021, he began making arrangements to take a sabbatical in San Diego to collaborate with Nadia Polikarpova, an associate professor in computer science and a member of the department’s Programming Systems Group.
While his sabbatical did not materialize, D’Antoni interacted with various faculty at the university and grew to love the area.
“I realized this was a very collegial department and the people were really supportive of each other. So then the thought entered my head ‘Great department, great people, maybe I should just move there!’ And the process started,” he said.
For D’Antoni, the city of San Diego is the “cherry on top.” He is taking full advantage of the area’s temperate climate to explore local beaches, gardens and the famed San Diego Zoo with his two daughters. In his free time, the computer scientist enjoys rock climbing, swimming laps, and pursuing a new sport – surfing San Diego’s world-class waves.
Since his arrival, D’Antoni has joined the Programming Systems Group, which aims to develop new languages, compilers, and program analysis techniques to improve software systems. Additionally, he is a scholar at Amazon Web Services.
D’Antoni’s string of impressive honors includes an Amazon Research Award (2021), two Facebook Probability and Programming Awards (2020), a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (2020), and a Google Research Award (2017). In 2017, he was recognized with the highly prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
By Kimberley Clementi