CV

Education

• Ph.D in Version Control Theory, GitHub University, 2018 (expected)
• M.S. in Jekyll, GitHub University, 2014
• B.S. in GitHub, GitHub University, 2012

Work experience

• Spring 2024: Academic Pages Collaborator
  • GitHub University
  • Duties includes: Updates and improvements to template
  • Supervisor: The Users
• Fall 2015: Research Assistant
  • GitHub University
  • Duties included: Merging pull requests
  • Supervisor: Professor Hub
• Summer 2015: Research Assistant
  • GitHub University
  • Duties included: Tagging issues
  • Supervisor: Professor Git

Skills

• Skill 1
• Skill 2
  • Sub-skill 2.1
  • Sub-skill 2.2
  • Sub-skill 2.3
• Skill 3

Publications

Let it Cook: Learning to Wait in Sequential Decision Making

Christopher Watson, Arjun Krishna, Dinesh Jayaraman, Rajeev Alur. "Let it Cook: Learning to Wait in Sequential Decision Making." Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC), 2026.

TiPToP: A Modular Open-Vocabulary Planning System for Robotic Manipulation

William Shen, Nishanth Kumar, Sahit Chintalapudi, Jie Wang, Christopher Watson, Edward Hu, Jing Cao, Dinesh Jayaraman, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Tomás Lozano-Pérez. "TiPToP: A Modular Open-Vocabulary Planning System for Robotic Manipulation." ArXiv preprint, 2026.

The Transformer Cookbook

Andy Yang, Christopher Watson, Anton Xue, Satwik Bhattamishra, Jose Llarena, William Merrill, Emile Dos Santos Ferreira, Anej Svete, and David Chiang. "The Transformer Cookbook" Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2026.

F2: Offline Reinforcement Learning for Hamiltonian Simulation via Free-Fermionic Subroutine Compilation

Ethan Decker, Christopher Watson, Junyu Zhou, Yuhao Liu, Chenxu Liu, Ang Li, Gushu Li, Samuel Stein. "F2: Offline Reinforcement Learning for Hamiltonian Simulation via Free-Fermionic Subroutine Compilation." ArXiv preprint, 2025.

Scenario-based Compositional Verification of Autonomous Systems with Neural Perception

Christopher Watson, Rajeev Alur, Divya Gopinath, Ravi Mangal, Corina Păsăreanu. "Scenario-based Compositional Verification of Autonomous Systems with Neural Perception." Symposium on AI Verification (SAIV), 2025.

Illustrated Landmark Graphs for Long-horizon Policy Learning

Christopher Watson, Arjun Krishna, Rajeev Alur, Dinesh Jayaraman. "Illustrated Landmark Graphs for Long-horizon Policy Learning." TMLR, 2025.

Formal Verification Techniques for Vision-Based Autonomous Systems – A Survey

Sayan Mitra, Corina Păsăreanu, Pavithra Prabhakar, Sanjit A. Seshia, Ravi Mangal, Yangge Li, Christopher Watson, Divya Gopinath, Huafeng Yu. "Formal Verification Techniques for Vision-Based Autonomous Systems – A Survey." In Principles of Verification: Cycling the Probabilistic Landscape: Essays Dedicated to Joost-Pieter Katoen on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, 2024.

Stream Types

Joseph W. Cutler, Christopher Watson, Emeka Nkurumeh, Phillip Hilliard, Harrison Goldstein, Caleb Stanford, Benjamin C. Pierce. "Stream Types." PLDI, 2024.

A Robust Theory of Series-Parallel Graphs

Rajeev Alur, Caleb Stanford, Christopher Watson. "A Robust Theory of Series-Parallel Graphs." POPL, 2023.

Talks

Teaching

CIS 6730: Computer-Aided Verification

CIS 5110: Theory of Computation

CS 4810: Introduction to Theory of Computing

Service and leadership

• Currently signed in to 43 different slack teams