Prof Dominic Orchard

My research is at the intersection of types, semantics, and logic, with a focus on programming languages and verification. I also work closely with domain experts in climate science.

• Research Professor and Co-director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science
  Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge
• Reader in the Programming Languages and Systems group
  School of Computing, University of Kent
• Bye-Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge

I am also a Fellow of the Institute for Research Software.

Projects / groups

Key funded projects that I am currently working on, and groups I am leading:

• Institute of Computing for Climate Science
• Forecasting tipping points in marine ecosystems
• Granule - Capturing program properties via graded (modal) types
• Programming Languages and Systems for Science Laboratory
• - Verification and static analysis for computational science

I also lead the Research Software Community of Practice at the University of Kent.

PhD Students	Postdocs / RAs
Vilem Liepelt Paulo Torrens Jay Torry Tori Vollmer Alex Coleman (second supervisor)	Roly Perera Chinmayi Baramashetru Nikolaus Huber Aditi Singh Roy

Recent Blog Posts

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• On the Role and Design of Software Interfaces in the LLM context - November 03, 2026 programming science software engineering llms
  Designing good interfaces for software, both external and internal, is hard. This post considers the potential negative effects of LLMs in this context and discusses...
• Generative AI in research software engineering for science - October 03, 2026 science
  What impact is generative AI having on research software engineering and scientific computing, and how can we identify where the real benefits could lie?
• FirstPrelude v0.2.0 for beginner Haskell using GHC - January 05, 2026 haskell teaching functional-programming
  A simplified Prelude for teaching functional programming without type classes getting in the way.

Recent Publications

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• Same Coeffect, Different Base: Connecting Two Dominant Approaches to Graded Types
  Vilem-Benjamin Liepelt, Danielle Marshall, Dominic Orchard
  ICFP 2026 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• Literate Execution
  Joseph Bond, Jacob Pake, Cristina David, Andrew McNutt, Trevor Sseguya Muwonge, Dominic Orchard, Roly Perera
  PLATEAU 2026 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• On Graded Coeffect Types for Information-Flow Control
  Vilem-Benjamin Liepelt, Danielle Marshall, Dominic Orchard, Vineet Rajani, Michael Vollmer
  Languages, Compilers, Analysis - From Beautiful Theory to Useful Practice: Essays Dedicated to Alan Mycroft on the Occasion of His Retirement. Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 114-148. [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• Structuring Arrays with Algebraic Shapes
  Jakub Bachurski, Alan Mycroft, Dominic Orchard
  ARRAY 2025 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• Cognacy Queries over Dependence Graphs for Transparent Visualisations
  Joseph Bond, Cristina David, Minh Nguyen, Dominic Orchard, Roly Perera
  ESOP 2025 [PDF] (BibTeX)
• A Mixed Linear and Graded Logic: Proofs, Terms, and Models
  Victoria Vollmer, Danielle Marshall, Harley Eades III, Dominic Orchard
  CSL 2025 [PDF] (BibTeX)
• Towards Modelling and Verification of Coupler Behaviour in Climate Models
  Chinmayi Baramashetru, Dominic Orchard
  PROPL 2025 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• FTorch: a library for coupling PyTorch models to Fortran
  Jack Atkinson, Athena Elafrou, Elliott Kasoar, Joseph G. Wallwork, Thomas Meltzer, Simon Clifford, Dominic Orchard, Chris Edsall
  Journal of Open Source Software 2025 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• fortran-src: Fortran static analysis infrastructure
  Mistral Contrastin, Raoul Hidalgo Charman, Matthew Danish, Benjamin Orchard, Dominic Orchard, Andrew Rice, Jason Xu
  Journal of Open Source Software 2025 [PDF] [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)
• Non-linear communication via graded modal session types
  Danielle Marshall, Dominic Orchard
  Information and Computation (301) 2024 [Publisher PDF] (BibTeX)

See full publications list →

Service

• Co-chair: PROPL 2024, TyDe 2021, PADL 2021, PLACES 2019, PLACES 2016, PLE 2015, PLE 2014
• Programme Committee: LOCO 2024, ICFP 2024, ESOP 2024, APLAS 2023 SRC & Posters, TASE 2023, POPL 2023, Haskell 2022, POPL 2019, BEAT 2019, TyDe 2018, Haskell 2015, Salon des Refusés 2017, IFL 2013
• External Review Commitee: ICFP 2020
• Artefact Evaluation Commitee: ECOOP 2014
• Other: Local organizer of Climate Informatics 2023, Panelist at PLMW 2019

Previous students and group members

• David Binder (post doc 2024-2026, now a lecturer at the University of Kent)
• Danielle Marshall (PhD student 2025, thesis: Graded Modal Types for Memory and Communication Safety, went on to a postdoc at the University of Glasgow)
• Michael Vollmer (post doc 2020-21 went on to be a Lecturer at the University of Kent)
• Marco Paviotti (post doc 2022 went on to be a Lecturer at the University of Kent
• Jack Hughes (PhD student 2024, thesis: Program Synthesis From Linear and Graded Types, went on to a postdoc at the University of Kent)
• Ben Orchard (Research Assistant 2021-23)