Kerim Kochekov

About

Education

• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

  Sept 2022 — Aug 2026

  PhD in Computer Science and Engineering

  Thesis: Leveraging Graph Decompositions for Faster Program Analysis and Compiler Optimization.

• Innopolis University

  Aug 2018 — Aug 2022

  BSc in Computer Science (Data Science)

  Thesis: Image-Text Matching using an Encoder and Decoder architecture.

Experience

• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

  Feb 2023 — May 2026

  Teaching Assistant

  • COMP 5712 — Introduction to Combinatorial Optimization.
  • COMP 3711H — Honors Design and Analysis of Algorithms.
  • COMP 4901W — Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts.

• University of Oxford

  Feb — Dec 2025

  Visiting Researcher

  Visited Prof. Amir Goharshady at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. Investigated function merging at the intermediate representation (IR) level, resulting in a paper at PLDI 2026.

• Getir

  Feb 2023 — Jul 2024

  Backend Engineer, Algorithm Team

  Developed a novel clustering algorithm on top of Google OR-Tools for vehicle routing. Deployed across Türkiye for nine months; improved courier utilization by 20–30% and reduced checkout miss ratio by 10–15%.

• Morphy Capital

  May — Aug 2022

  Quantitative Researcher

  • Dynamic feature-selection algorithm in Python for ML pipelines.
  • Built a CatBoost model for BIST-30; the model and feature-selection algorithm outperformed company baselines.

Publications

• The Bounded Treedepth of Programs and Treedepth-Guided CDCL

  Accepted at SETTA 2026 (International Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools and Applications)

  M. Alambardar, A. K. Goharshady, K. Kochekov, and H. J. Motwani

• Parameterized Algorithms and Complexity for Function Merging with Branch Reordering

  Published in PLDI 2026 (Programming Language Design and Implementation)

  A. K. Goharshady, K. Kochekov, T. Shu, and A. K. Zaher

  Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 10, Issue PLDI, Article 204, pp. 881–903. DOI: 10.1145/3808282

• Exploiting the Sparseness of Control-Flow and Call Graphs for Efficient and On-Demand Algebraic Program Analysis

  Published in OOPSLA 2023 (Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications)

  G. K. Conrado, A. K. Goharshady, K. Kochekov, Y. C. Tsai, and A. K. Zaher

  Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 7, Issue OOPSLA2, Article 292. DOI: 10.1145/3622868

Awards

• Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme

  HKPFS recipient — approximately US$200,000 in total support over four years.

• IMPACT International Zhautykov Olympiad 2026

  Silver medal, Computer Science

• ACM SIGPLAN Travel Grant 2024

  Travel support to attend POPL 2024

• ACM-ICPC Northern Eurasia

  3rd-degree diplomas (2018, 2020, 2022)

• Facebook Hacker Cup 2021

  342nd in Round 3 — 500 invited from 30,000+ participants

• Google Hash Code 2019

  101st among 6,600+ teams (top 2%)

• International Olympiad in Informatics 2018

  Bronze medal (~90 countries)

• International Zhautykov Olympiad 2018

  Silver medal, Computer Science (~35 countries)

• National Olympiad in Informatics 2018

  1st place, Turkmenistan

• Asian-Pacific Olympiad in Informatics 2017

  Bronze medal (~34 countries)