PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Federico Mora

Also known as Federico Mora Rocha

Federico Mora is a computer scientist whose work connects formal methods with AI for code. He earned a bachelor's degree in math and computer science at Mount Allison, a master's in computer science at the University of Toronto, and a computer science doctorate at UC Berkeley in 2025. His research includes StringFuzz and MedleySolver, SPEAC for low-resource code, neuro-symbolic verification tools, and bandit-based solver choice for program synthesis. He worked as an applied scientist at Amazon Web Services from 2025 to 2026. Since 2026, he is an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2016–2018

    Degrees in mathematics and computing

    He earns a B.Sc. in Math and Computer Science at Mount Allison University in 2016. At the University of Toronto, he completes an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 2018.

  2. 2018

    StringFuzz for string solvers

    In 2018, he coauthors StringFuzz: A Fuzzer for String Solvers with Dmitry Blotsky, Murphy Berzish, Yunhui Zheng, Ifaz Kabir, and Vijay Ganesh.

  3. 2021

    MedleySolver and a Qualcomm fellowship

    In 2021, he coauthors MedleySolver: Online SMT Algorithm Selection with Nikhil Pimpalkhare, Elizabeth Polgreen, and Sanjit Seshia. In 2021, he and Kevin Cheang receive the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship for Practical Lifting for Verification of Trusted Platform Software.

  4. 2024

    SPEAC for low-resource languages

    In 2024, he coauthors SPEAC, which uses an intermediate language and compiler repairs to help language models write syntactically valid programs in very low-resource programming languages. The team tests it with UCLID5, a formal-verification language.

  5. January 2025

    A neuro-symbolic verification stack

    In January 2025, he presents PVerifier, Algaroba, and Eudoxus as a stack for verifying distributed systems. Algaroba solves SMT queries for algebraic data types, while Eudoxus is a neuro-symbolic text-to-code tool that automates interaction with verification engines.

  6. April 2025

    Choosing solvers for synthesis

    In April 2025, he coauthors Online Prompt Selection for Program Synthesis. Its multi-armed bandit method selects a symbolic solver or an LLM-and-prompt combination for a synthesis task.

  7. 2025–2026

    A Berkeley PhD and Sakrison prize

    In 2025, he completes a Ph.D. in Computer Science at UC Berkeley under Sanjit A. Seshia. From 2025 to 2026, he works as an Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services. He receives UC Berkeley's 2025–2026 David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize.

  8. Since 2026

    Waterloo professor and Vector affiliate

    Since 2026, he is an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute.

Career

  1. Since 2026University of WaterlooAssistant Professor
  2. Since 2026Vector InstituteFaculty Affiliate
  3. 2025–2026AmazonApplied Scientist

Education

  1. 2025University of California, BerkeleyPh.D. in Computer Science
  2. 2018University of TorontoM.Sc. in Computer Science
  3. 2016Mount Allison UniversityB.Sc. in Math and Computer Science

From the biography.

  1. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes Federico Mora. We estimate that 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a company; 29% of moves starting at a university went to a company, and 76% ended the university role.
  2. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Federico Mora. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  3. Of 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 446 work there nowIncludes Vector Institute. Our estimates of where the 943 people shaping AI who worked at Google and Google DeepMind work now: 446 at Google and 452 across 278 other organizations.
  4. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes Vector Institute. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Federico Mora yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Federico Mora | Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo uwaterloo.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Federico Mora federico.morarocha.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Kevin Cheang and Federico Mora win 2021 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship - EECS at Berkeley eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Synthetic Programming Elicitation for Text-to-Code in Very Low-Resource Programming and Formal Languages papers.nips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Seminar • Software Engineering | Formal Methods • Towards Scalable and Usable Domain-Specific Automated Reasoning | Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo cs.uwaterloo.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Online Prompt Selection for Program Synthesis | Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence ojs.aaai.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Student Award: David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize | EECS at UC Berkeley www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Federico Mora - Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Federico Mora Rocha federico.morarocha.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.