Computer scientist living in Cambridge, MA. I hold a MS in Computer Science from Purdue University and a BS in Computer Science from Tufts University. I currently am a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Draper Laboratory, primarily focused on binary software analysis. At this role I was a key innovator for Draper’s contribution to the DARPA Assured Micropatching (AMP) Project. I am now working on a new project in software analysis for one of Draper’s customers.
From 2019-2022 I was a software engineer at Holos, a VR startup based in Madison, WI. I was brought on to take Holos’ single player VR experience and make it work across networked connections. Holos’ software is used for training purposes, and was developed under a contract from the US Air Force to train F-35 fighter jet mechanics.
In the past I was at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the position of Assistant Staff. While there I primarily focused on embedded systems development, computer networking and graph theory research. I left this position in early 2019.
Areas of Expertise: Programming Languages, Computer Networking, Software Security, Computer Graphics, Embedded Systems Programming, Machine Learning, Concurrent Systems, Simulation and Game Development, and Mathematics
Publications
Helbling, Caleb, and Samuel Z. Guyer. “Juniper: a functional reactive programming language for the Arduino.” Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modelling, and Design. ACM, 2016. View pre-print on arXiv
Helbling, Caleb. “Directed Graph Hashing.” 51st Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory & Computing. 2020. View pre-print on arXiv
Helbling, Caleb, and Fırat Aksoy. “Solving the Funarg Problem with Static Types.” 33rd Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages. ACM, 2021. View pre-print on arXiv
Helbling, Caleb, Graham Leach-Krouse, Sam Lasser, and Greg Sullivan. “cozy: Comparative Symbolic Execution for Binary Programs.” Workshop on Binary Analysis Research (BAR). 2025. 🔴 Winner of the BAR 2025 Distinguished Paper Award. View pre-print on arXiv
Bug Bounties
CVE-2021-40464 - Windows Nearby Sharing Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability - reported to Microsoft and bug bounty received
Resume
Contact me
Current Activities
Juniper - Functional Reactive Programming for the Arduino
dihash - Python library for hashing directed graphs
Unicycle Boston - I am the co-organizer of Boston’s only unicycle club!
Past Activities
cozy - Comparative Symbolic Execution (DARPA AMP)
Blockspell - a multiplayer magical combat game set in a voxel environment. Development has been permanently suspended due to changing priorities
Ace of Spades, pyspades server developer. Game acquired by Jagex Game Studios and subsequently released on Steam. The original game can still be played for free at Build and Shoot, although player counts have dwindled in recent years.
Global Game Jam Projects
Fun Links
- Wikipedia Current Events Portal. My goto site for mostly unbiased coverage of current world news. I often find things here that aren’t being covered in mainstream American media. One of the true gems of the Internet.
- Georgism. An interesting economic alternative to both the current American capitalism system and socialism/communism. Has features that are desirable to both liberals and libertarians.
- If you have never seen a unicycle freestyle performance, I recommend checking it out! Freestyle unicycle performances are very similar to figure skating routines, where the performers do tricks in sync with music. The Japanese team is excellent, I recommend their videos: Video 1, Video 2.
- Interaction Nets are an evaluation strategy that allows for easy parallel computation of lambda calculus. It is a confluent graph rewrite system where any particular reduction path is beta-optimal. The logic for each worker thread is quite simple since it is easy to discover redexes by looking for active pairs of nodes.