I am an assistant professor in Computer Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego advised by Sorin Lerner. I completed my PhD in Computer Science at UMass Amherst, where I was advised by Yuriy Brun. I received a BS in Math and Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College.

When I’m not working on research, I’m mostly watching reality TV or rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles (go birds). I also enjoy playing tennis, skiing, and cooking with my amazing husband Subendhu Rongali.

Call for Papers: TrustedSoftwAIr 2027

Submit to TrustedSoftwAIr 2027, the International Workshop on Building Trusted Software with AI, co-located with ICSE 2027 in Dublin, Ireland (April 26, 2027). Submissions are due November 13, 2026 (AoE).

TrustedSoftwAIr brings together researchers across software engineering, programming languages, AI, mathematics, HCI, and verification who are using AI to make building trusted software easier, with the goal of sparking cross-pollination and collaboration between these communities.

We welcome research papers (up to 8 pages), vision and early-idea extended abstracts (up to 2 pages), and presentations of already published work (non-archival). Topics include AI-driven proof engineering, specification formalization, trustworthy code synthesis, AI-augmented software analysis and testing, human-AI collaboration, AI for mathematics, and more. See the call for papers for details and submit via HotCRP.

Research Interests

Overall, my research interests are in AI for SE/PL and formal/quantitative reasoning.

I am interested in leveraging AI for theorem proving as a playground for exploring how AI can reason better, and in turn, how humans can use AI to reason better themselves in a variety of domains, such as formal verification and research-level mathematics.

I consider myself an interdisciplinary researcher, working at the intersection of machine learning, software engineering, and programming languages. I work on creating tools to automatically generate proofs and lemmas in proof assistant languages, such as Rocq (formerly Coq), Isabelle/HOL, and Lean. I am also interested in making effective interfaces for humans to interact with AI-based tools for these languages to enhance their productivity.

Working With Me

PhD Applicants: I’ll be recruiting PhD students to start in Fall 2027. Apply through the Rutgers CS PhD program. In your application, mention my name and describe your fit with my research areas. I will reach out to you if your application seems like a good fit.

AI and Math Seminar

I’m a co-organizer of the weekly Rutgers AI and Mathematics Seminar, where we have invited talks on the use of Lean and AI methods in mathematics research. Check out our seminar page!

Teaching

I am teaching CS 515 (graduate programming languages) in Fall 2026. There are no available grader positions for the course.

Contact

emily dot first at rutgers dot edu

Please do not send emails to my ucsd or umass email addresses as they are no longer active.

Any email or communication not from my official rutgers email address is NOT me. I have not sent mass communication offering assistantships, hourly work, or money of any sort. I would never contact you via WhatsApp, text, or phone. Scammers suck, stay vigilant.