Internships on Haskell and GHC, at Microsoft Research, Cambridge

 Microsoft Research Cambridge now runs a year-round  internship programme. You can apply for an internship slot in any area covered by the lab, but Simon and I are of course keen to attract strong applications from people interested in functional programming, Haskell, and GHC.

What is an internship?

An internship is a paid post, for three months (occasionally up to 6), at Microsoft Research in Cambridge (MSRC). You get to work on a project agreed, usually in advance, with your MSRC sponsor. Both parties benefit. You get to work in a leading-edge research lab, with fantastic people floating around all the time. We get the benefit of your hard work, and perhaps the start of a collaborative relationship.

In principle, Microsoft owns any intellectual property you generate, but this isn't relevant for an open-source project like GHC. You're also strongly encouraged to publish your work as a paper, often written jointly with your sponsor.

Who is eligible?

Internships are aimed primarily at students currently studying for a PhD. That's the norm, but it's not a cast-iron requirement.

Internships to work on Haskell and GHC

Simon and I always have a zillion projects that we'd like to see done, but do not have time to do. An internship is a chance for you to work closely with us --- we usually meet with interns daily, and we never have more than one at a time --- on one of these projects. (Or you can suggest a project of your own.)

Internship projects should have some research content, and ideally lead to a paper. It's not just hacking.

To give you some idea, here are some past projects

• Kevin Donnelly is changing GHC's intermediate language to support equality constraints.
• Roshan James is writing a parallel garbage collection
• Geoff Washburn made the first implementation of GADTs in GHC
• Dimitrios Vitytonis worked on type inference for impredicative polymorphism
• Krasimir Angelov completed and released Visual Haskell.

Here is a list of some possible future projects we have in mind:

• Update/improve  Visual Haskell
• Work on the  GHCi debugger
• Refactor GHC's code generator into two phases: (a) generate C-- with native procedure calls, (b) perform CPS conversion, as a C-- to C-- conversion, to generate code ready for the existing native code generators.
• Add views to Haskell.  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/Views
• Improve code generation; see suggestions in BackEndNotes
• Implement  John Meacham's class alias proposal
• Implement semi-tagging or other optimisation improvements in GHC
• Experiment with multiprocessor Haskell and/or STM by building and measuring applications, investigate improvements
• Build a Windows-native version of GHC (using MS tools instead of gcc).

MSRC has lots of other interesting work on programming languages too: F#, security, etc. Check it out  here.

When can I apply?

You can apply ANY TIME. Internships are not just the summer months. Contact one of us (simonpj@…, simonmar@…) in the first instance (or another sponsor if they are more suitable).

To apply, follow the instructions at  http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/jobs/internships/, and email one of us to say that you have done so.

Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow