PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Thomas Reps

Also known as Thomas W. Reps, Thomas William Reps, Tom Reps

Thomas Reps's research covers automatic program analysis, including slicing, dataflow analysis, program synthesis, and modeling code with machine-learning techniques. He completed a Cornell computer-science Ph.D. in 1982 after building the Cornell Program Synthesizer and the Synthesizer Generator with Tim Teitelbaum, and the dissertation won the 1983 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. From 1985 to 2024 he was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and from 1988 to 2019 he was president of GrammaTech, which he co-founded with Teitelbaum. With Susan Horwitz he led a program-slicing group until 2014, and in 2023 he shared the CAV Award for context-bounded analysis of concurrent programs. He is an emeritus professor there, and he received the 2017 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award.

Works
439
Citations
20,720
h-index
72

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 17 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1977–1985

    Cornell tools and a doctorate

    He receives a Harvard B.A., cum laude, in 1977. From 1978 to 1985 he works with Tim Teitelbaum at Cornell on the Cornell Program Synthesizer and the Synthesizer Generator. He completes a computer-science Ph.D. at Cornell in 1982, and the dissertation wins the 1983 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

  2. 1985–2014

    Program slicing at Wisconsin

    He joins the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1985. With Susan Horwitz, until she dies in 2014, he co-leads a research group on program slicing and its applications in software engineering. In 1988 he, Susan Horwitz, and David Binkley publish a paper on interprocedural slicing using dependence graphs, selected as one of the 50 most influential papers from PLDI, 1979 to 1999.

  3. 1986–2013

    Fellowships and academy membership

    He receives an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1986 and a Packard Fellowship in 1988. In 2000 he receives a Humboldt Research Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He becomes an ACM Fellow in 2005 and a foreign member of Academia Europaea in 2013.

  4. 1988–2019

    President of GrammaTech

    He and Tim Teitelbaum co-found GrammaTech to commercialize their research, and he serves as president from 1988 to 2019. In 1999 the company commercializes the Wisconsin Program-Slicing Tool as CodeSurfer for C and C++. CodeSonar for C and C++, a static-analysis tool, becomes available in 2005.

  5. 2003–2004

    Value-set analysis for x86

    In 2003 he and Gogul Balakrishnan develop value-set analysis, a static-analysis algorithm for x86 machine code that tracks values through memory. Their 2004 paper on analysis of assembly code receives the ETAPS Best-Paper Award from the European Association for Programming Languages and Systems.

  6. 2017

    A SIGPLAN achievement award

    He receives the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award in 2017. The citation includes incremental computation, program slicing and dataflow analysis, shape analysis, and analysis of binary code.

  7. 2023

    A CAV Award

    He shares the 2023 CAV Award with Akash Lal, Madan Musuvathi, Shaz Qadeer, and Jakob Rehof for the introduction of context-bounded analysis and its application to the systematic testing of concurrent programs.

  8. Since 2024

    Emeritus professor at Wisconsin

    He is an Honorary Fellow and the J. Barkley Rosser Professor and Rajiv and Ritu Batra Chair Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His time on the faculty runs from 1985 until 2024, and recent work covers program analysis, program synthesis, and modeling code with machine-learning techniques.

Sources and credits

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  1. Thomas W. Reps -- Biography pages.cs.wisc.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  2. Thomas W. Reps - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  3. Automating Abstract Interpretation | HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study ias.hkust.edu.hk. Checked 16 October 2026.
  4. Programming Languages Achievement Award sigplan.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  5. People of Programming Languages cs.cmu.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  6. GrammaTech - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  7. Thomas W. Reps -- Research Summary pages.cs.wisc.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  8. CAV Award | International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification i-cav.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  9. Reps, Thomas W. • The David and Lucile Packard Foundation packard.org. Checked 16 October 2026.