About

I am an universitair hoofddocent (roughly equivalent to associate professor) in the Software Technology Group of Utrecht University.

Brief bio

After studying Mathematics and Computer Science at the Utrecht University, I did my PhD under supervision of Thorsten Altenkirch at the University of Nottingham's Functional Programming Lab. I worked as a postdoc at Chalmers University of Technology, before moving back to the Netherlands to work at Vector Fabrics, a high-tech startup that used functional programming to facilitate the design of embedded systems. In 2011 I returned to academia as a postdoc in Foundations Group at the Radboud University. After Nijmegen, I moved to Utrecht on another postdoc position before becoming universitair docent (assistant professor) in 2013. In Utrecht I have served in a variety of senior roles within the department, including Programme Leader of our BSc and MSc Computing Science programmes.

I am honoured to serve as Functional Pearl Editor for the Journal of Functional Programming. If you're considering submitting a pearl, you may want to read this advice.

And in case your wondering, here's how to pronounce my name.

Recent publications

A Lightweight Approach to Formal Algorithmic Complexity (Functional Pearl)

Wouter Swierstra. Submitted.

On laziness and inequality (Functional Pearl)

Wouter Swierstra. Submitted to JFP.

Programs and Proofs in Practice: A Grounded Theory on How People Use Dependently Typed Interactive Theorem Provers

Ruben Backx, Sára Juhošová, Wouter Swierstra and Jesper Cockx. Submitted.

PLEX: Normalization for Refinement Types

Alessio Ferrarini, Niki Vazou and Wouter Swierstra. OOPSLA 2026.

Hole Refinements for Polymorphic Type-and-Example Driven Synthesis

Niek Mulleners, Johan Jeuring and Wouter Swierstra. PEPM 2026.

A Layered Certifying Compiler Architecture  [bib]

Jacco O.G. Krijnen, Wouter Swierstra, Manuel Chakravarty, Joris Dral, and Gabriele Keller. FUNARCH 2025.

More publications...

Recent talks

Programming with dependent types: beyond evaluating the simply typed lambda calculus

IFL invited talk. Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

The functional essence of imperative binary search trees

IFIP WG 2.8. Utrecht, the Netherlands.

A correct by construction conversion to combinators

IFIP WG 2.8. Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The functional essence of imperative binary search trees

IFIP WG 2.1. Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.

A well-known representation of monoids and its application to the function “vector reverse”

ICFP. Remote presentation.

More talks...