Alexia Massalin

Alexia Massalin, formerly Henry Massalin, is an American computer scientist and programmer who pioneered the concept of superoptimization and designed the Synthesis kernel, a small operating system kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency. She studied at the Cooper Union School of Engineering in Manhattan, where she obtained a bachelor's and a master's degree, and received a PhD in computer science from Columbia University in 1992 under Calton Pu. In the 1980s she worked for Philon Inc., a New York start-up specializing in optimizing compilers, and in October 1992 she joined MicroUnity as a research scientist responsible for signal-processing modules and software architecture. For Synthesis she invented object-like data structures called Quajects, which contain both data and code, and the kernel optimized critical operating system code using run-time information, an insight previously thought impractical.