Dr. Lionel Parreaux and Students Awarded the ACM SIGPLAN ICFP 2026 Distinguished Paper Award

Dr. Lionel Parreaux and his research team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST have received a Distinguished Paper Award at the 2026 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP). Co-authored with CSE students Chun Kit Lam and Florent Ferrari-Dominguez, their research was recognized among the top 10% of accepted papers for its exceptional contribution to the field of programming languages.

Their award-winning paper, "First-Class Constrained Types: Elaboration, Type Inference, Approximation, and a Characterization of Termination," explores a first-class treatment of constrained types. The researchers define "System FCCT," demonstrating that typability within this system characterizes call-by-name (CBN) termination. Furthermore, the paper introduces a precise type inference algorithm (FCCTI) that sheds light on the difficulties of bounded polymorphic type inference, and establishes new connections with existing intersection type systems.

Congratulations to Dr. Parreaux, Chun Kit Lam, and Florent Ferrari-Dominguez on this remarkable academic accomplishment!

Details of the award-winning paper

About ICFP

The ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) is the main international forum for research, education, and practice in functional programming. ICFP covers the full range of work on functional programming languages, from theory and design to implementation, applications, and experience.