My name is Felipe Bañados Schwerter, and I am a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where I work with Prof. Ronald Garcia. My current research interests include Gradual Typing, Type Systems, Type-and-Effect systems, and Abstract Interpretation.

I really appreciate the opportunity to attend this conference. While I have attended other conferences (including POPL and ICFP), this is my first time at ECOOP, even though I have been reading papers published here for a long time. While my research focus has been recently oriented towards functional programming, I am also very interested in OOP.

I think conferences like ECOOP are a great opportunity to connect with the experts in the field, to ask questions and to meet new people. I hope to interact with researchers from across the globe, as well as to meet people for whom this is also their first research conference. I am also looking forward to attend the Summer School, which has an outstanding program.

For this conference I have also been asked to mentor some other student participants. I consider this an honor and am looking forward to meet other students throughout the week. I hope I can be of use to others as others have helped me throughout the years, from my supervisors to people at PLMW workshops… They have all been always very helpful.