About

The Software Languages Lab (SOFT) is a research lab within the Department of Computer Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The Software Languages Lab was founded in 2009 as a merger of the Programming Technology Lab and the System and Software Engineering Lab. SOFT is presided by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang De Meuter, and counts Prof. Dr. Elisa Gonzalez Boix, Prof. Dr. Coen De Roover, Prof. Dr. Bas Ketsman, and Prof. Dr. Antonio Paolillo as additional full-time professors and Em. Prof. Dr. Theo D'Hondt and Prof. Dr. Viviane Jonckers, as emeriti.

Broadly speaking, the lab is active in the design, implementation and application of better languages to support the software engineering process.
This includes programming languages, formal languages, design languages, meta languages, modeling languages, domain specific languages, etc.
The Software Languages Lab covers all aspects of the research spectrum, including:

  • Design of languages (advanced modularity, distribution, concurrency, context, …)
  • Formal study of languages (type systems, abstract interpretation, static analysis, contract systems, …)
  • Efficient implementation of languages (virtual machines, parallelization, scheduling, …)
  • Tool support for languages (IDEs, debuggers, versioning tools, evolution support, refactoring, …)
  • Applications of languages (android applications, RFID‐enabled applications, web applications, embedded applications, city-ware, …)
  • Design and study of query languages and their implementation (static analysis, expressivity, complexity, algorithms, formal optimality guarantees, distribution, ...)

The lab participates in the following collaborative research projects:

Have a look at our research page for more details.