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
    OOPSLA 2025
Zero-Cost Lexical Effect Handlers

Cong Ma, Zhaoyi Ge, Max Jung, 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
Zero-Cost Lexical Effect Handlers

NEPLS '25 - University of Massachusetts, Lowell (Mar '25)
ONPLS '25 - University of Waterloo (May '25)

[slides]

Lexical Effect Handlers, Directly

OOPSLA '24 - Pasadena, California (Oct '24)
MWPLS '24 - University of Chicago (Dec '24)
NJPLS '24 - Cornell Tech (Dec '24)

[slides]

Quantifying and Mitigating Cache Side Channel Leakage with Differential Set

OOPSLA '23 - Cascais, Portugal (Oct '23)

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
Let's Chat! ☕
Since you've found your way here, I'd love to chat! Whether you're interested in my work or just want to connect, feel free to book a time below. I'll reply with a calendar invite as soon as possible.
Misc
I spent a year working on distributed system reliability at DoorDash. You can read a blog post here.