Contact

Email: bmikek@gatech.edu	Lab: Klaus 2319
GitHub: mikekben	Linkedin: Benjamin Mikek

About me

I’m a fifth year Ph.D. student in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. I am a member of the Programming Languages & Software Engineering Group (PLSE), advised by Professor Qirun Zhang. My research interests are broadly in the area of programming languages, and I’m specifically interested in static analysis and program verification techniques, including using SMT solvers like Z3. I’m also excited to apply ideas from theory and mathematics to program analysis. I graduated from Grinnell College in 2021 with distinction in Computer Science and Mathematics.

Publications

• Spatial and Temporal Decomposition for Faster Translation Validation
  Benjamin Mikek, Chathur Bommineni, Qirun Zhang, and Thomas Reps
  OOPSLA 2026.
• Agentic Code Optimization via Compiler-LLM Cooperation
  Benjamin Mikek, Danylo Vashchilenko, Bryan Lu, and Panpan Xu
  Preprint 2026: arXiv:2604.04238 [cs.LO].
• SMT Theory Arbitrage: Approximating Unbounded Constraints using Bounded Theories
  Benjamin Mikek and Qirun Zhang
  PLDI 2024.
• A Performance Verification Methodology for Resource Allocation Heuristics Saksham Goel, Benjamin Mikek, Jehad Hussein, Venkat Arun, Ahmed Saeed, and Aditya Akella.
  Preprint 2024: 2024arXiv:2301.04205 [cs.LO].
• Speeding up SMT Solving via Compiler Optimization
  Benjamin Mikek and Qirun Zhang
  ESEC/FSE 2023. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award.

News

• August 2025 I will present my work, Towards Compiler-Guided Static Analysis, at the SPLASH 2025 Doctoral Symposium in Singapore.
• February 2025 I will be joining AWS as an applied scientist intern in Summer 2025.
• January 2025 I will be a member of the artifact evaluation committee for PLDI 2025.
• February 2024 Our paper, SMT Theory Arbitrage: Approximating Unbounded Constraints using Bounded Theories, has been conditionally accepted to PLDI 2024.
• February 2024 I will present my work on leveraging LLVM optimizations for constraint solving at EuroLLVM 2024, 10 April in Vienna.
• January 2024 I will be a member of the artifact evaluation committee for PLDI 2024.
• January 2024 I will be a member of the artifact evaluation committee for CAV 2024.
• December 2023 Our paper, Speeding up SMT Solving via Compiler Optimization, won a SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper award at FSE 2023.