Closing Panel

Martin Odersky is the inventor of the Scala language, a professor at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, and a founder of Lightbend.

Scala team lead @ Lightbend

Heather Miller is the executive director of the Scala Center at EPFL, where she is a research scientist, and an Assistant Clinical Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. She recently completed her PhD in EPFL's Faculty of Computer and Communication Science where she contributed to the now-widespread programming language, Scala. Heather's research interests are at the intersection of data-centric distributed systems and programming languages, with a focus on transferring her research results into industrial use. She has also led development of popular MOOCs some 800,000 students strong, such as "Functional Programming Principles in Scala."

Kelley has worked in a variety of engineering roles, ranging from trading live cattle derivatives to building production data pipelines in Scala. She spends a lot of time thinking about how to make technical concepts accessible to new audiences. In her spare time, Kelley spends a lot of time cooking and greatly enjoys reorganizing her tiny kitchen to accommodate completely necessary small appliance purchases.

I have been programming for more than 35 years and nothing has improved the quality and maintainability of my code more than adopting typed FP. I think all programmers can benefit from learning the basics, and I am dedicated to helping interested people learn.