The PLEIAD laboratory of the Computer Science Department (DCC) of the University of Chile (Faculty of Engineering) is a newly-created laboratory dedicated to research on new software development techniques.

PLEIAD stands for Programming Languages and Environments for Intelligent, Adaptable and Distributed systems. We explore how programming language constructs and environments can enable the development of evolvable and highly-adaptable software, particularly considering distributed computing.

A non-technical overview of our activities, created for the magazine of the DCC, is available in Spanish (original version) and in English (translated from the original).

(want to know more?)

• Doublé of PLEIAD at AOSD 2010! our papers on AspectScript and on Execution Levels have been accepted!

• Our IEEE Software paper on TOD is now published: see the publisher page

• É. Tanter is now Associate Editor of the LNCS Transactions on AOSD

• É. Tanter is part of the Program Committee of the 9th Workshop on the Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages (FOAL 2010)

• An aspect language for Web programming! check out AspectScript

• We are organizing the second summer school on programming languages PL2009 at the JCCC 2009. The topic of this year is: The Role of Programming Languages in Software Evolution

• M. Denker gave a talk to DCC: “An Instrument whose Music is Ideas. Smalltalk, eToys and the Idea of the Children's Machine” slides abstract

• More...

Our research is situated at the intersection of Programming Languages and Paradigms, Distributed and Pervasive Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. The main focus is on Software Adaptation in a broad sense.

More specifically, we are involved in research related to:

• Computational reflection
• Program transformations
• Domain-specific languages
• Aspect-oriented programming
• Ambient-oriented programming
• Distribution and concurrency
• Biologically-inspired computing and AI

Main software artifacts:

• AspectScript: an aspect-oriented extension of JavaScript for expressive AOP; integrates several state-of-the-art features related to higher-order programming and expressive scoping of aspects.
• TOD: a practical omniscient debugger for Java, integrated into Eclipse
• Scheme interpreters, exploring different facets of scoping in programming language design, in particular for aspect- and context-oriented programming
• Reflex: versatile kernel for multi-language AOP

PLEIAD members are involved in teaching various courses. Course information can be found on the teaching page. Thesis proposals (Engineering and Masters), are on the thesis page.