Malin Altenmüller


I'm a postdoc in the Quantum Programming Group within the Quantum Software Lab at the University of Edinburgh, working on programming languages for quantum systems.

Before that I was a PhD student in the Mathematically Structured Programming Group at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. My thesis discusses combinatorial representations of string diagrams for non-symmetric monoidal categories, and can be found [here] (version before corrections).

During some of my PhD I was also a research intern with the Programming Languages Group at Huawei in Edinburgh.

a photo of Malin
I'm interested in graphical languages, combinatorial graph theory, programming language theory, type theory, metaprogramming, and applied category theory.

Do get in touch if you're interested in any of these topics!
malin [dot] altenmuller [at] ed [dot] ac [dot] uk

My pronouns are she/her.
a photo of the quantum programming group
	    in Edinburgh

Papers

  • Combinatorial Presentations of String Diagrams for Non-Symmetric Monoidal Categories (PhD Thesis)
         Document available [here] (version before corrections)
  • A Category of Surface-Embedded Graphs (MA, R. Duncan)
        at Applied Category Theory 2022, document available on [arXiv]
    We introduce a categorical formalism for rewriting surface-embedded graphs. Such graphs can represent string diagrams in a non-symmetric setting where we guarantee that the wires do not intersect each other. The main technical novelty is a new formulation of double pushout rewriting on graphs which explicitly records the boundary of the rewrite. Using this boundary structure we can augment these graphs with a rotation system, allowing the surface topology to be incorporated.
  • Talks

  • Reasoning with strict symmetric monoidal categories in Agda
  • A Data Type of Intrinsically Plane Graphs
    •     at the British Colloqium for Theoretical Computer Science BCTCS, 14/04/2025, [slides]
  • Notions of Monads and Comonads in Programming
  • A Category of Graphs with Substitution and Pattern Matching
  • Plane Graphs, (Co-)Operads, and Pattern Matching
  • Contour Categories, Control Flow Analysis
  • A Category of Surface-Embedded Graphs
  • Control Flow as a Contour of Data Flow
    •     at a Workshop on Diagrammatic Methods in Edinburgh, 24/01/2023, [slides]
    •     at MSP 101, 09/06/2023, [slides]
  • A Category of Plane Graphs
        at SYCO9 in Como, 09/09/2022, [abstract] and [slides], this talk was voted the Best Student Presentation of the event
  • A Category of Surface-Embedded Graphs
         at ACT in Glasgow, 21/07/2022, [slides]
  • A Datatype of Planar Graphs
         at TYPES in Nantes, 23/06/2022, [abstract] and [slides]
  • Decorated Trees
         at SPLS (online), 20/10/2021, [slides]
  • Some Thoughts on a Datatype for Higher Genus Graphs
        at MSP 101, 25/02/2021, [slides]
  • A Combinatorial Presentation of the Operad of Plane Graphs
  • Containers of Applications and Applications of Containers
    •     at SPLS in St Andrews, 13/03/2019
    •     at TYPES in Oslo, 13/06/2019
  • Finitary Indexed Containers
        at MSP 101, 15/02/2019
  • Projects

  • Read the Mood Mode and Stay Positve - adding polarity annotations in Agda
        joint work with J. Ceulemans, L. Escot, A. Nuyts, J. Poiret
        [abstract] at TYPES in València, 12/06/2023
  • TypOS: An Operating System for Typechecking Actors
        joint work with G. Allais, C. McBride, G. Nakov, F. Nordvall Forsberg, C. Roy
        [abstract] and [talk recording] at at TYPES in Nantes, 23/06/2022
  • Involvement

  • I am a member of the TYPES Steering Committee (term: 2025-2028).
  • I was one of the organisers of the Scottish Programming Languages and Verification Summer School, SPLV 2025, in Edinburgh.
  • I served on the Program Committee for TYPES 2025.
  • Links

    PL research in Scotland, category theory seminars in Scotland, colouring for colourblind, PL deadline calendar, editor for tikz-cd diagrams , What3Words, an xkcd, travel through Europe by train
    last modified: