POPL 2026
Sun 11 - Sat 17 January 2026 Rennes, France

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Sun 11 Jan 2026 15:12 - 15:22 at Salle 13 - Third Session

Probabilistic programs encode stochastic models as ordinary-looking programs with primitives for sampling numbers from predefined distributions and conditioning. Their applications include machine learning and modeling of autonomous systems. The analysis of probabilistic programs is often quantitative—it involves reasoning about numerical properties like probabilities and expectations. A particularly important quantitative property of probabilistic programs is their posterior distribution, i.e. the distribution over outcomes. Computing the posterior distribution exactly is known as exact inference. We present our current research using weighted automata, a generalization of the well-known finite automata, for performing exact inference in a restricted class of discrete probabilistic programs. This is achieved by encoding distributions over program variables—possibly with infinite support—as certain weighted automata. The semantics of our programming language then corresponds to common automata-theoretic constructions such as concatenation and union.

Extended Abstract (LAFI26.pdf)480KiB

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Sun 11 Jan

Displayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change

14:00 - 15:30
Third SessionLAFI at Salle 13
14:00
10m
Talk
Towards Compiling Higher-Order Programs to Bayesian Networks
LAFI
Claudia Faggian CNRS, Université Paris Cité, Gabriele Vanoni IRIF, Université Paris Cité
14:12
10m
Talk
On Contextual Distances in Randomized Programming: Amplification and Lower Bounds
LAFI
14:24
10m
Talk
Nominal Semantics for First-class Automatic Differentiation
LAFI
Jack Czenszak Yale University, Alexander K. Lew Yale University
14:36
10m
Talk
Semantic Foundations for Laziness in Discrete Probabilistic Programming
LAFI
Simon Castellan University of Rennes; Inria; CNRS; IRISA, Tom Hirschowitz Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LAMA, 73000 Chambéry, Hugo Paquet Inria, École Normale Supérieure
14:48
10m
Talk
Incremental Density Computation for Efficient Programmable Inference
LAFI
Fabian Zaiser MIT, Vikash Mansinghka Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alexander K. Lew Yale University
15:00
10m
Talk
Generating Functions Meet Occupation Measures: Invariant Synthesis for Probabilistic Loops
LAFI
Kevin Batz , Adrian Gallus RWTH Aachen University, Darion Haase RWTH Aachen University, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski Saarland University; University College London, Joost-Pieter Katoen RWTH Aachen University, Lutz Klinkenberg RWTH Aachen University, Tobias Winkler RWTH Aachen University
15:12
10m
Talk
Probabilistic Programming Meets Automata Theory: Exact Inference using Weighted Automata
LAFI
Dominik Geißler TU Berlin, Germany, Tobias Winkler RWTH Aachen University
File Attached