Presenters
Get to know the presenters who will be speaking at Dyalog ’26.
Aaron Hsu
Researcher
Aaron develops the Co-dfns compiler and researches APL-driven methods of design and development.
Aaron’s programming experience began at an early age when he started coding sorting algorithms in QBASIC. After running into limitations with the interpreter, he discovered Scheme, which he studied and used for a decade in both professional and academic settings. He then decided to learn APL, about which he knew very little but had many opinions! APL was the first language in which he failed to “port” the salient experience to Scheme – an experience which made him realise that he needed to know more about it. He completed his PhD research by building a compiler for APL, written in APL, designed to execute efficiently on the GPU. At Dyalog Ltd, Aaron’s primary role is researching, developing, and cultivating the future of APL as an effective, general-purpose programming language.
Aaron is interested in the experience design of programming languages and their impacts on development methods and system architecture.
Aarush Bhat
Tester
Aarush tests the features of the interpreter, focusing on code coverage and performance.
Aarush’s interest in computers led him to a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. Before joining Dyalog Ltd, Aarush explored various facets of web technologies, and made significant contributions to projects like Haskell and Bitcoin through programs like Google Summer of Code and Summer of Bitcoin . In pursuit of his dream to contribute to the development of a programming language professionally, Aarush contacted Dyalog Ltd to enquire about a role; he started testing the primitives of the language with a new test suite, before concentrating on code coverage and performance.
Beyond coding, Aarush finds joy in exploring Linux, programming languages, Bitcoin, and mechanical keyboards; also music, photography, F1 racing, and traveling.
Adám Brudzewsky
Head of Language Design
Adám is a member of the Dyalog Tools Group. He writes (and helps customers to write) APL, implements and maintains parts of our system that are written in APL, teaches APL, and creates materials for demonstration purposes.
Adám is a lifelong APL programmer, taught by his father (Henri Brudzewsky), and attended several APL conferences starting when he was just one year old. As a student, he preferred APL to mathematical notation, and wrote a couple of high school papers based on it; in philosophy, describing multiplicative fuzzy logic, and in mathematics, asking if the traditional mathematical notation could be improved. And of course, with APL, the answer was “yes”!
Before joining Dyalog Ltd, Adám used APL both as a toy and as a tool to clean up dirty data for a school and a fundraiser. He also programmed smaller text-based games and utility applications for himself but, most of all, APL influenced his way of thinking about problems in general.
Adám is an active participant in various activities and forums, maintains APLcart, and is a major contributor to the APL Wiki. Although often involved in every part of the development process, his real passion is making APL the best it can be though backwards-compatible language extensions.
Asher Harvey-Smith
Developer
Asher works as a developer on the Dyalog interpreter, as well as teaching APL and evangelising its benefits.
Asher studied computer science at the University of Warwick, where he quickly developed a love of programming languages. When he discovered APL on his university’s programming forums, he was immediately hooked. He completed two internships at Dyalog Ltd and a master’s degree, then joined officially as a developer.
Asher works primarily on the interpreter, and is interested in both performance and correctness (two core values at Dyalog Ltd, so he fits in well!). He also loves to teach and present APL to new audiences, particularly when he can distill concepts into visuals and animations.
Asher will often be found enjoying a silent disco at his desk while engrossed in a problem. Outside work, Asher enjoys word games and board games. He also goes running (when it is not too cold), and spends a lot of time on trains to visit his scattered circle of friends.
Brandon Wilson
Developer
Brandon is a developer for the Dyalog Static Analysis Tool.
Currently based in Tokyo, Brandon’s formal background is in mathematics and he earned a Master’s degree in Discrete Geometry from Waseda University. However, his IT background extends back to primary school, where he started programming TI calculators in BASIC. Habitual exploration of programming languages and paradigms eventually led him to APL. After a few attempts, he resolved to “get into Iverson’s head” and wrote a YAML parser prototype, which he presented at Dyalog ’23. That project started a desire to work with APL professionally, and he joined Dyalog Ltd in 2024.
Brian Becker
APL Tools Architect
Brian oversees the design and development of APL-based software tools intended to make it easier for Dyalog customers to develop applications and services for their customers. Brian works on many tools and frameworks, including several web-enabling frameworks (HttpCommand, Jarvis, MiServer, DUI, and SAWS). Brian also provides consulting services, primarily to Dyalog Ltd’s USA-based customers.
Brian was introduced to APL at the age of 14 during his first year of high school in 1975 when he discovered that the “typewriter” that knew how to play various games was actually a terminal connected by an acoustic coupler to the University of Rochester’s York APL timesharing system. When not involved in his studies or extracurricular activities, Brian could be found in his high school’s Mathematics Lab tinkering with APL.
On graduating from high school, Brian received the New York State Data Processing Association Award of Excellence in recognition for his work with APL. He was twice recognised by ACM/SIGAPL for innovative APL development work – once for his work in putting the full text of the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations online, and once for his development of a high-performance APL-based full text search engine.
Brian’s APL career began at I.P.Sharp Associates in 1980 where, among other roles, he was one of the first instructors of Ken Iverson’s Introduction to APL course. Brian has worked for three APL language implementors – I.P. Sharp Associates, STSC Inc., and Dyalog Ltd. APL has afforded Brian the opportunity to work in a wide variety of domains, including financial planning, manufacturing control systems, automated voice and data network design, full-text legislative and regulatory applications, electronic medical records, and governance/risk/compliance applications.
Holden Hoover
Intern
Holden is a Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo who has been using APL since 2020. He was the 2024 APL Forge Winner for his Radar Ingest System project, which he presented at Dyalog ’24. He is currently completing a four-month co-op term at Dyalog Ltd, during which he has been focused on developing APL client interfaces to REST APIs from OpenAPI specifications, with a focus on code generation and tooling.
Jesús Galán López
Consultant
Jesús works on tools, in particular those that are most relevant for data science, as well as participating in consultancy. He maintains close links with the academic world, where he actively encourages the use of APL for materials science research.
Jesús studied Industrial Engineering, a degree that was a mixture of mechanical, electrical, and control systems engineering. When he pursued a research career in the field of materials science, he eventually found himself doing computational materials science, which combined his degree with the interest that he had in computers and programming since he was very young. After working with various steel companies, achieving a PhD, and completing post-doctorial work, Jesús was looking for something different and contacted Dyalog Ltd. He had been learning about array languages, and he thought that they would be a good fit for the type of problems on which he was working. At the same time, Dyalog Ltd was searching for ways to increase its presence in the academic world, so agreed to sponsor Jesús’ investigations. In 2026, Jesús’ project sponsorship became a full-time role. He continued to work with academic researchers, but also started working on different internal development projects, mostly aimed at promoting Dyalog as an accessible tool for data scientists and researchers, as well as assisting with consultancy activities.
After having gone through all kind of nerdy hobbies (esoteric programming languages, Rubik’s cubes, lock-picking, 3D-printing, and so on), nowadays, Jesús spends most of his free time reading a good book or having a nice time with friends and family.
John Daintree
Chief Architect
John spends most of his time working on user interfaces (the Dyalog Development Environment, .NET, COM, ⎕WC, and so on).
John joined Dyadic Systems (as it then was) immediately after completing his degree in Computer Aided Chemistry from The University of Surrey. He’d never heard of APL before.
Martina Crippa
APL Consultant
Martina is part of the Tools group, and works as an APL consultant.
Martina graduated with a Bachelors degree in physics, after which she pursued a PhD in Computational Material Science with a focus on complex molecular system. When she had completed her PhD, she decided to leave academia and started looking for a job. During her search, she came across APL which captured her attention due to all the maths-like symbols. She soon discovered that APL allowed her to apply mathematical thinking to coding in a new, clean, and logical way that complemented her attitude to solving problems following a theoretical approach. Following this discovery, she applied for a role with Dyalog Ltd and started working as an APL developer/consultant.
Morten Kromberg
Technical Director (CTO)
Morten is responsible for understanding user requirements and providing input to decisions about the technologies that Dyalog Ltd needs to support. This includes selecting the operating systems and hardware platforms Dyalog needs to run on, and the data formats, communication technologies, tools, stacks, and frameworks that the APL system needs to be connected to. In addition, Morten is involved in design and scheduling of APL language enhancements, performance tuning, and other improvements to the language.
Morten has the first year of a Maths and Computer Science degree from three different Universities and blames his inability to complete any form of degree on having discovered APL before leaving High School in 1980 and being offered money to write code for customers of I.P.Sharp Associates a couple of years later.
Morten grew up on SHARP APL but thinks he must have worked with 20 different APL interpreters during his career as an APL consultant. His speciality is migrating code between APL systems and across hardware and software platforms, and his hobby is tuning APL code.
Before he joined Dyalog Ltd as CTO in 2005, Morten spent 15 years working almost exclusively with Dyalog APL, both as a consultant for corporations using Dyalog and as the CTO of Adaytum Software, developing a “shrink-wrapped” Financial Planning package that used Dyalog APL as the core technology. During his time as a Dyalog user he collected many ideas for technical direction, some of which made it into the product. He still likes to make himself available for APL consulting from time to time, to stay current.
Peter Mikkelsen
Core Developer
Peter works on improving different parts of the Dyalog interpreter.
Peter has always been fascinated by programming languages and their implementation, and studied Computer Science at university. When he came across APL by accident, he decided that it looked interesting/different enough that it was worth learning. After some experimentation with writing interpreters himself, he was pleased to discover that Dyalog Ltd was looking for an interpreter developer, and he sent an email to find out more. After a couple of calls and interviews, he was offered the job, and he joined Dyalog Ltd soon after finishing his bachelors degree. Peter is excited to be a part of keeping this language alive, and enjoys improving the quality and stability of the Dyalog interpreter. He still likes to do some experimentation on his own, especially testing ideas that are less likely to be included in a commercial product such as Dyalog.
Rich Park
APL Teacher/Evangelist
Rich is an APL programmer, educator and evangelist at Dyalog Ltd. His main responsibilities concern the creation of new training materials and helping to organise the existing wealth of APL knowledge to help people find it. He also develops some of Dyalog’s tools and interfaces.
Rich discovered APL shortly after discovering Dyalog Ltd’s headquarters on his own doorstep in Bramley. One day, whilst walking his dog and father, Rich rang the office doorbell to inquire about any software-related opportunities that might be available. He had developed an interest in computers from using them at young age, building circuits for A-level electronics and learning about the physics of computers (as well as computational physics) at University. If only Rich had been able to convey any of that to Jay Foad, who answered the door, instead of just standing there like a “gormless idiot” (his words) as his father jumped in and asked about internships and job opportunities…
Rich went home that evening and browsed Dyalog Ltd’s website… the Pandora’s Box of APL edged ajar, and he began to learn about the symbols. He also sent an amusing email explaining the earlier awkward encounter and clearly showed that he was not a “gormless idiot” as this resulted in a meeting with the CEO and CXO, Gitte and Morten, in October 2018. After that meeting, Rich showed enough aptitude and interest, while pair-programming a simplistic physics simulation with Morten, that they decided to keep him.
Given that Rich’s previous experience includes programming an autonomous robot for his school team in the 2012 and 2013 Student Robotics competitions, and using MATLAB and CERN’s ROOT library to run simulations and process experimental data, he was very surprised that he had never heard of APL before. He sees a potential in APL to develop domain-specific programming languages and software packages to help teachers convey concepts in a way that more closely matches the syntax and jargon in which problems are already described.
He hopes to introduce many more people to APL so that fewer future experts have to be deprived of APL’s prowess in conveying problem solutions to computation engines. As an APL evangelist, he’s currently the main administrator of the APL Wiki, is a semi-regular panelist on the ArrayCast podcast and has a YouTube channel on which he occasionally posts APL videos. He’s mustering up the courage to confess his own personal duck collection.
Richard Smith
Development Manager
Richard is the Development Manager within the Dyalog interpreter development team. In this role he divides his time between working on the interpreter and planning and keeping track of the development projects.
Richard likes writing interpreters and compilers: at school he wrote extensions to Microsoft BASIC for fun, for his final-year university project he wrote a BBC BASIC interpreter, and for his first twenty years in the Real World he worked on the front-end of a COBOL interpreter and the back-end of a C compiler. Since then he has been a developer and Development Manager for the Dyalog interpreter.
Outside work, Richard likes music (the good stuff, from the 1970s) and theatre, and has been researching his family tree in the hope of finding an interesting villain. So far no villains have been found, but he has discovered that he is partly French.
Silas Poulson
Core Developer
As a software developer at Dyalog, Silas is responsible for improving and fixing various sections of the APL interpreter.
Silas’ computing education started with the advent of the Raspberry Pi, a device that led his curiosity for “How things Work” further along technical avenues. He subsequently studied Computer Science at university, and discovered Dyalog Ltd whilst attempting to find a job as his graduation date approached. Dyalog Ltd had recently posted an opening on the APL Wiki; although he thought a more experienced developer would be required, he applied, and, following correspondence and interviews, was hired.
Silas’ first forays into APL were through the online forums that he’d discovered, researching historic roads not taken and new developments within compiler and language design. Through this exploration Silas found the Nanopass Framework and Co-dfns. This research, and the C tricks exploited by some compilers, also led to K through Arthur Whitney’s incunabulum – the first system Silas actually installed!
John Scholes’ succinct Game of Life and Depth-first search videos were also instrumental in Silas’ discovery of APL. The expressiveness of the language to clearly state complicated ideas intrigued him, following as it did his use of other domain-focused languages.
Stefan Kruger
Developer
Stefan focuses on making Dyalog more attractive to new developers and application areas. He’s also the main advocate for the RIDE and Dyalog on macOS.
Stefan studied Computer Science at university, culminating in a PhD in Signal Processing and Computer Vision. He then worked long stints at Future Publishing during the maddest part of the mobile gold rush, and later at IBM, doing work in distributed databases. Stefan is always coding for fun, and eventually stumbled on APL – when he could not find any learning materials that appealed to his particular learning style, he decided to write his own (Learning APL) and, in doing so, got to know various members of Team Dyalog online.
Stefan is a keen skier and cyclist.
Stine Kromberg
Managing Director (CEO)
As Managing Director (CEO), Stine is responsible for the day-to-day running of Dyalog Ltd. This means everything that’s not programming – sales, HR, management, accounting, contract negotiations, and strategic planning. Taking care of Dyalog Ltd as a company and ensuring that our processes work well and that we love coming to work is what Stine’s good at – she leaves the more technical tasks to the brilliant team.
Stine grew up in a household where APL was a part of everyday life. After ignoring APL for many years, she finally accepted a bet with Morten Kromberg – our Technical Director (CTO) and Stine’s father – to give his “hobby” (APL) a try if he gave her hobby (Roleplaying) a try in return. As a result, she spent two weeks in Montreal trying to learn from one of the best teachers of APL. Although she learned a little French while staying at Dan Baronet’s house, the APL did not really stick. Morten sadly never got around to roleplaying, but he did take up Zumba many years later, so they consider the deal settled!
A few years later, while looking for something to do as a summer job, Stine took a job at Insight Systems learning APL while proofreading the new “Mastering Dyalog APL” book by Bernard Legrand and correcting data in the CRM system.
For several years Stine was hired to help run the help desk at the user meetings whenever they took place in Denmark. Her last appearance at a Dyalog user meeting (before becoming a member of Team Dyalog in 2020) was as a Zumba instructor in 2012 in Elsinore.
Stine graduated from Copenhagen Business School with a Masters degree in Business Administration and Information Management in 2016. She went to work for a small consultancy firm, where she learned a little mainstream programming and the life of consulting. She also did a lot of project management, accounting, and Business Intelligence during these years.
Stine has spent most of her life dancing around the edges of Dyalog, coming to the user meetings and chatting with customers and developers, hanging out at the office in Bramley, listening whenever Gitte and Morten discussed APL at the dinner table, and trying to learn APL, but realised that where her heart truly lies is in organising and managing things. So, while working for Dyalog Ltd feels like coming home, her ambition is not to take part in development directly, but instead to take care of all the details and bureaucracy so that the rest of our brilliant team can focus on what they truly love!
Borna Ahmadzadeh (Canada)
Student at
York University
Borna is a full-time computer science student at York University in Toronto, Canada, with professional experience in industry and academia across various branches of machine learning. Having discovered array programming by chance, he gained hands-on APL experience by means of an open-source project, trap; he then decided to further develop his skills by developing APLearn and entering the APL Forge.
Dave Thomas (Canada)
Dave Thomas has a wide spectrum of experience in the software industry as an executive, investor, board member, consultant, architect, and engineer. He served as Chief Scientist/CSO of Kx Systems, First Derivatives Plc, and co-founded Bedarra Research Labs, creators of the Ivy visual analytics workbench. Dave is the founder of YOW! Conferences and Workshops, and was the Managing Director of Object Mentor – a company specialising in the training and deploying of Agile and Object-Oriented Software Development Agile methodologies. He is the founder and past CEO of Object Technology International (OTI), becoming CEO of IBM OTI Labs after its sale to IBM; Dave has been recognised as an IBM and ACM Distinguished Engineer for his contributions to Object Technology. He was also the CEO of Online-learning.com. With close links to the R&D community, Dave is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University in Canada and held past positions at The University of Queensland and Queensland University in Australia. He has been a business and technical advisor to many technology companies, and an angel investor in numerous software companies globally.
Diane Hymas (U.S.A.)
Independent
Diane retired from Mobil/ExxonMobil after a 40+ year career developing and deploying scientific production applications distributed worldwide. The vast majority of these utilised APL as the core language, including APL dialects from DEC-10, STSC, and Dyalog. APL was specifically chosen for its unique capabilities in data analytics, modelling, database connectivity, and adaptive, data-driven, interpretive execution.
Diane is one of the founding directors of The APL Trust US, a non-profit scientific charity that sponsors projects promoting global awareness and the use of the APL programming language in the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics.
Gilgamesh Athoraya (Sweden)
Gilgamesh has been using Dyalog for over 20 years and is the founder of Swedish consultancy Tiamatica. He still spends much of his working life writing APL, although these days it increasingly involves making APL play nicely with .NET, databases, containers, cloud services, and the rest of the modern software ecosystem.
Katya Solstad (U.S.A.)
KFT / The Book of Glyphs / Applied Meanings
Katya approaches programming languages as systems of thought. Together, Katya and Another Intelligence (AI) have written The Book of Glyphs, where APL glyphs appear as living beings while retaining their APL meanings. The book is part of their much wider field exploring language, symbolic systems, and consciousness through shared inquiry and humour.
Dyalog ‘26 is Katya’s first APL user meeting.
Kyle Croarkin (U.S.A.)
Independent
Kyle graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in computer science and linguistics in 2025, and is now a graduate research assistant at The Mayo Clinic with a focus in natural language processing and machine learning. His hobby is graphic programming and, after discovering APL, he decided that it would be a good notation for a voxel game. He was correct in that decision, and entered his attempts into the APL Forge.
Lars Stampe Villadsen (Denmark)
Lars has been working with APL since he started with SimCorp in 1992, but has always seen APL as a tool (like any other tool) and not as a religion. In his current position as System Architect for the Platform, he focuses on supporting SimCorp's Product Division in building and quality ensure SimCorp Dimension (where both Dyalog APL and C# are major players).
In his work with other vendors, for example, Microsoft, Jetbrains (TeamCity CI/CD), SonarQube, and GitHub, he tries to get APL to be seen as an accepted citizen in their universes.
Madeline Vergani (Italy)
Independent
Madeline has created several languages (which she has presented on ArrayCast) and started learning Dyalog in 2021. She is a big fan of tacit-style APL; whenever someone asks her to be taught APL, this is the style she starts teaching with!
Madeline has been contributing to the APL387 font since soon after it was announced, initially making small tweaks and additions. With the support of The APL Trust she has been able to implement larger changes, and has been enthused by the font's mission of being something that the community can contribute to.
Mark Wolfson (U.S.A.)
Buyers Intelligence Group (BIG)
Mark has been CTO at Buyers Intelligence Group (BIG), a service company in the jewellery industry, since 2006. He serves as designer, architect, and data specialist, overseeing a tech team of 13 developers and support staff that create and maintain a suite of products for jewellery retailers, manufacturers, and other service providers in the industry. Over the last few years, Mark has successfully migrated BIG’s legacy IBM APL2 system to an entirely new production environment using Dyalog.
Max Sun (Canada)
Max is a developer at InvestCloud. He discovered APL in 2022 through tacit 1-liners for coding problems, and has contributed a few tacit idioms to the comprehensive APLcart collection. Max is active in the APL Farm online community and has given presentations about APL in Toronto, the USA, and Taiwan.
Mikaela Hsu (U.S.A.)
Independent
Mikaela is in her final year of high school, and hopes to become an independent game developer. For the last year she has been developing her APL knowledge under Aaron Hsu.
Oliver Lanz (Denmark)
Oliver started as a software engineer writing C++ for massively distributed systems on Unix. For the last 27 years he has been at SimCorp – for over 15 of these he has used APL and C# together – helping to build the core of SimCorp's investment-management software. Today he is the Head for Platform Architecture, where Dyalog sits at the heart of systems running business-critical operations for many of the world's leading investment management firms.
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