Lex van der Stoep

Lex van der Stoep

PhD student, Computer Science — EPFL

Hello! My goal is to make it easier for programmers to build reliable systems. I hope to contribute to this through research on formal methods and programming languages. Though my interest is in the field broadly, I focus mostly on its application to networking.

Research

Algebraic Routing

Algebraic Routing

This research bridges the gap between the high-level algebraic model of routing protocols and a more realistic low-level model of their asynchronous behaviour, formalising the results in Agda. It builds on over a decade of work in algebraic routing by Prof Timothy Griffin and Dr Matthew Daggitt, where they use algebraic structures to reason about network protocols. My bachelor thesis laid the foundation in a synchronous setting, and my master thesis extended it to the asynchronous nature of real-world routing. For both theses I was supervised by Prof Timothy Griffin.

  • Palantir prize for highly commended Part II dissertation. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 2019
Thesis Report Code

Teaching

I'm a teaching assistant for CS-214 Software Construction at EPFL (Fall 2026). The course teaches students how to develop robust and performant software, covering foundational topics in functional programming and software engineering.

Blog

CV

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science at EPFL, in Nate Foster's LASeR lab (2026 - now).

Prior to returning to academia I was a software engineer and team lead at IMC Trading (2020 - 2026).

I earned my bachelor and master degrees in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, where I mostly focussed on theoretical computer science and where I developed my passion for formal methods, programming languages and research (2016 - 2020).