Benjamin Pierce is Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow of the ACM. His research interests include programming languages, type systems, language-based security, computer-assisted formal verification, differential privacy, and synchronization technologies. He is the author of the widely used graduate textbooks Types and Programming Languages and Software Foundations. He has served as co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Functional Programming, as Managing Editor for Logical Methods in Computer Science, and as editorial board member of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, Formal Aspects of Computing, and ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, as vice-chair of ACM SIGPLAN, as a member of ACM Council, and as chair of the SIGPLAN ad hoc committee on climate change. He holds a doctorate honoris causa from Chalmers University and in 2021 was awarded the inaugural SIGPLAN Distinguished Educator's Award. He is also the lead designer of the Unison file synchronizer.
Benjamin is also deeply involved in climate and sustainability efforts at Penn and beyond, including co-leading efforts to develop carbon offsetting policies for air travel both at Penn and within the Association for Computing Machinery. He currently co-chairs the subcommittee on Community and Policy of Penn's Committee on the Institutional Response to the Climate Emergency (CIRCE). He was also the co-developer of the Midspace virtual conference platform.