Cong Ma
PhD student
Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo

Research Interests

I study programming languages, and I'm advised by Yizhou Zhang.

Before that, I worked on security and programming language at Penn State University, advised by Danfeng Zhang

Peer-Reviewed Publications
    In Submission
Zero-Cost Lexical Effect Handlers

Cong Ma, Zhaoyi Ge, Yizhou Zhang

    OOPSLA 2024
Lexical Effect Handlers, Directly

Cong Ma, Zhaoyi Ge, Edward Lee, Yizhou Zhang

[ full paper | the Lexa language ]

    OOPSLA 2023
Quantifying and Mitigating Cache Side Channel Leakage with Differential Set

Cong Ma, Dinghao Wu, Gang Tan, Mahmut Taylan Kandemir, Danfeng Zhang

[ full paper | the DSA tool ]

Talks
    NEPLS 2025, ONPLS 2025
Zero-Cost Lexical Effect Handlers

[slides]

    MWPLS 2024, NJPLS 2024
Lexical Effect Handlers, Directly

[slides]

Awards
David R. Cheriton Graduate Scholarship
2024 OPLSS Fellowship Grant
2024 MWPLS Travel Grant
PSU CSE Teaching Assistant Award
Service
Organizer: Ontario Programming Languages Seminar (ONPLS) 2025
Misc
I spent a year working on distributed system reliability at DoorDash. You can read a blog post here.