PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mac Malone

Mac Malone is a computer scientist whose work spans cybersecurity education and software for formal theorem proving. At UNC Chapel Hill, he coauthored papers on gamified cybersecurity instruction and secure Jupyter autograding and earned a computer science PhD in 2023. At Lean FRO, he designed a new test framework, developed and maintained Lake, and helped implement Lean Copilot for large language model proof automation and search. As of October 2026, he is a Research Software Engineer with Lean FRO.

Timeline

  1. 2021

    A cybersecurity education paper

    In 2021, he coauthors “To Gamify or Not? On Leaderboard Effects, Student Engagement, and Learning outcomes in a Cybersecurity Intervention” with Yicheng Wang, Kedrian James, Murray Anderegg, Jan Werner and Fabian Monrose at the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium.

  2. January 2022

    Lean 4 milestone contributor

    Lean 4 v4.0.0-m3 lists him among its contributors in January 2022. It is Lean 4's third milestone release and the last planned milestone before an official release.

  3. 2023

    Secure Jupyter autograding

    In 2023, he coauthors “Securely Autograding Cybersecurity Exercises Using Web Accessible Jupyter Notebooks” with Yicheng Wang and Fabian Monrose at the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium.

  4. 2023

    A PhD in computer science

    In 2023, he earns a Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His dissertation, “Improving Student Enjoyment, Time Management, and Performance Using a Secure, Immersive Gamified Learning Platform,” presents Riposte, an online gamified learning platform with a 2D action game and an integrated Jupyter Notebook environment.

  5. August 2023–July 2024

    Lake and a testing framework

    During Lean FRO's first year, from August 2023 to July 2024, he is responsible for designing a new Lean test framework and integrating it with Lake. He also develops and maintains Lake, Lean's build system and package manager.

  6. 2024–2025

    Helping implement Lean Copilot

    A 2024 preprint about Lean Copilot is accepted to NeuS in 2025. The project credits him with implementation help on its tool, which uses large language models in Lean for proof automation and proof search.

  7. March 2025

    Lake globs guidance

    In March 2025, he explains Lake's TOML glob syntax in a discussion about a dataset of proofs for 20 IMO problems. He gives `globs = ["imo_proofs.+"]` as the TOML form and shows the Lean shorthand `globs := #[`imo_proofs.+]`.

  8. As of October 2026

    Research Software Engineer

    As of October 2026, he is a Research Software Engineer with Lean FRO.

Career

  1. NowLean Focused Research OrganizationResearch Software Engineer

Education

  1. 2023University of North Carolina at Chapel HillPhD

From the biography.

  1. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Convergent Research. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Fabian Monrose: Publications fabianmonrose.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Lean 4.0.0-m3 (2022-01-31) lean-lang.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Dissertation or Thesis | Improving Student Enjoyment, Time Management, and Performance Using a Secure, Immersive Gamified Learning Platform | ID: 3n204787m | Carolina Digital Repository cdr.lib.unc.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. The Lean FRO Year 1 Roadmap lean-fro.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. LeanCopilot | Reservoir reservoir.lean-lang.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Zulip Chat Archive leanprover-community.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Team — Lean Lang lean-lang.org. Checked 21 October 2026.