Scott Owens is a software engineer with 13 years of experience who combines rigorous academic research—PhD in Computer Science and a decade as a university lecturer/researcher—with production engineering at Meta since 2020. He brings deep expertise in formal methods and theorem proving, evidenced by significant contributions to the HOL4 theorem-prover repository improving core tactics, finite maps, and list/permutation theorems. Comfortable moving between research and large-scale engineering, he excels at turning formal reasoning into practical, performant code. Based in London, he pairs a strong mathematical foundation from Rice and Utah with an ability to ship durable systems in industry settings. A less obvious strength is his track record of optimizing low-level proof infrastructure, showing attention to both correctness and performance.
13 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics and Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics and Computer Science at Rice University
Canonical sources for HOL4 theorem-proving system. Branch develop is where “mainline development” occurs; when develop passes our regression tests, master is merged forward to catch up.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Contributions:15 commits, 1 push, 9 comments in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Scott made significant contributions to the HOL4 theorem-proving system, focusing on improving the efficiency and functionality of core components. Their work involved optimizing the `EVERY_CASE_TAC` tactic by integrating datatype theorems into a simpset, leading to performance improvements. They also imported and integrated new theorems related to finite maps and alists, drawing from the CakeML project. Furthermore, the user added new lemmas and theorems related to lists, sorting, and permutations, demonstrating a strong understanding of theorem proving and formal methods.
Contributions:170 commits, 125 pushes, 3 branches in 3 years 5 months
compilerocamlimperativeimperative-language
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