Shoaib Akram is a Ph.D. candidate at Ghent University in Belgium. He has an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology in Pakistan. His research focuses on the intersection of programming languages, system software, and computer architecture. His current research investigates software approaches to ease the adoption of emerging memory technologies. His recent research also explores the potential of language runtimes in abstracting the complexity of heterogeneous hardware.