--- title: "A New Beginning" categories: research rust --- I have some very exciting news to share: starting November 1st, I will work at ETH Zürich as an assistant professor! Becoming a professor in the first place is a dream come true, and becoming a professor at a place like ETH Zürich is not something I even dared to dream of. I still cannot quite believe that this is actually happening (I will be *professor*?!??), but [the news is out](https://twitter.com/CSatETH/status/1548944615285350400) so I guess this is real. :D I feel excited and terrified in about equal parts. Excited by all the new possibilities, by the prospect of working with students and inspiring the next generation of researchers; terrified by all the responsibility and the prospect of having to stand in a classroom and give a lecture in only a few months' time. But somehow everyone else seems confident that I can do this, so I guess I'll just play along and hope that I will not prove them wrong... I am also humbled and eternally thankful for being given this opportunity. Being able to work in an environment like ETH is a privilege beyond imagination, and I don't know how I got so lucky. I probably used up all my Karma points for the rest of my life, and will do my best to honor this privilege. I feel hugely indebted to everyone I worked with, first and foremost of course my PhD advisor [Derek Dreyer](https://people.mpi-sws.org/~dreyer/). But I would also like to specifically call out the Rust community, because I don't think this would have happened without Rust -- thanks to *everyone* who contributed to this language that I am essentially building my career on[^rust], and thanks in particular to everyone who indulged in my ideas for how Rust should approach unsafe code and helped me shape that corner of the language. [^rust]: Before anyone gets worried, I also have some [ideas](https://iris-project.org/) I want to pursue that are unrelated to Rust. But Rust is currently by far the biggest inspiration for new research problems for me, and without Rust I don't think my research would be anywhere near as applied and impactful as it is today, which I am sure played a key role in the decision of ETH to hire me. So what's next? I will soon finish my post-doc at MIT and move back to Europe, and then move to Zürich in October. And then I will have to figure out how this being-a-professor thing works. ;) My first main priority is building a research group: the "Programming Language Foundations Lab"[^lab]. So if you are interested in doing a PhD or post-doc working on, well, programming language foundations, and in particular formal foundations for Rust, or if you are an ETH student interested in a Master Thesis in that area -- please [reach out](https://research.ralfj.de/contact.html)! I am still figuring out how to do things like hiring people and finding suitable projects, but there is no shortage of open problems that need solving and theorems that need proving. :) [^lab]: Yes, I have a lab coat. I don't usually wear it though... and if you want to see me wear it, that will cost you some beer.