Zhendong Su's Homepage

Zhendong Su
Professor and Chancellor's Fellow
Department of Computer Science
University of California, Davis
(on leave in the 2018-19 AY)
Ph.D. (2002) Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley

Homepage at ETH Zurich

Recruiting PhD students and post-docs
Recent work

Compiler Validation via Equivalence Modulo Inputs (PLDI'14, Distinguished Paper) [slides]
Our EMI-based compiler testing project (funded in part by NSF and Google)
(PLDI'14, ISSTA'15, OOPSLA'15, ICSE'16, ISSTA'16 [artifact download], OOPSLA'16, PLDI'17, ICSE'18)
[GCC/LLVM bugs: 1,602 (total) / 1,007 (fixed)]
[Reports: GCC (link1, link2, link3, link4, link5), LLVM (link1, link2, link3, link4, link5)]
We are grateful to the compiler developer community for publicly acknowledging our efforts (e.g., in the LLVM release notes and in GCC's list of contributors).

Detecting Logic Vulnerabilities in E-commerce Applications (NDSS'14) [slides]

Research

My research interests span programming languages, software engineering, and computer security, focusing on developing methodologies, techniques and tools for improving software reliability & security and programming productivity.

Current Projects [Funded by NSF, LLNL, AFOSR, Intel, IBM, Microsoft] (needs update)

Automated debugging [ICSE'06, ASE'07]
Clone detection and similarity checking [ICSE'07, FSE'07]
Firewall modeling, analysis, and optimization [S&P'06, TNSM]
Malicious code detection, analysis, and prevention [CCS'05, ASPLOS'06, ACSAC'06]
Program analysis of numerical software [TACAS'04, TCS'05, ICSE'06]
Web and database application security and reliability [ICSE'04, SAVCBS'04, POPL'06, PLDI'07]

Selected Recent Publications [complete list | DBLP | Google Scholar] (needs update)

Synthesizing method sequences for high-coverage testing (OOPSLA'11)
Static detection of access control vulnerabilities (USENIX Security'11)
Scalable and precise detection of buggy inconsistencies (OOPSLA'10)
How unique is source code? (FSE'10)
Perturbing numerical computation to detect instabilities (ISSTA'10)
Dynamic detection of unsafe component loadings (ISSTA'10, Distinguished Paper Award)
Has the bug really been fixed? (ICSE'10)
Simultaneously learning and enforcing temporal properties (ICSE'10)
Static validation of CPP macros (ASE'09)
Client-side detection of XSS worms (ESORICS'09)
Detecting functionally equivalent program fragments (ISSTA'09)
Detecting clones in binary executables (ISSTA'09)
Simplifying programs for better testing and analysis (FSE'08)
Mining specifications using compositional rules (FSE'08)
Concolic testing of web applications (ISSTA'08)
Scalable detection of semantic clones (ICSE'08)
Symbolic mining of temporal specifications (ICSE'08)
Static detection of XSS vulnerabilities (ICSE'08)
Context-aware statistical debugging (ASE'07)
Context-based detection of clone-related bugs (FSE'07)
Static detection of SQL injection vulnerabilities (PLDI'07)
Deckard: a new clone detection tool (ICSE'07) [download]
Validity checking for automata over linear constraints (FSTTCS'06)
Temporal search for hidden malware analysis (ASPLOS'06)
Firewall rule validation (IEEE S&P'06) [download]
Hierarchical delta debugging (ICSE'06) [download]
Dimensional unit checking (ICSE'06)
Runtime detection of SQL injection attacks (POPL'06)
Analysis of polymorphic worm exploits (CCS'05)
Subtype satisfiability over posets (ESOP'05)
Static checking of database applications (ICSE'04, Distinguished Paper Award)
Integer range constraints (TACAS'04, invited paper for a TCS special issue)
More selected publications: POPL'02, POPL'00, PLDI'98, TACAS'98 (EAPLS Best Paper), ESOP'01, FoSSaCS'98

Professional Activities

Current Activities

Member: ISSTA Steering Committee (2011 -- present)
Member: ESEC/FSE Steering Committee (2017 -- present)

PC Member: ESEC/FSE'19, Tallinn, Estonia, August 2019.
PC Member: PLDI'19, Phoenix, Arizona, June 2019.
PC Member: ICSE'19, Montreal, Canada, May 2019.
PC Member: TACAS'19, Prague, Czech Republic, April 2019.
PC Member: ESEC/FSE'18, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, November 2018.
EPC Member: OOPSLA'18, Boston, MA, November 2018.

Past Activities

PC (co-)Chair: SAS'09, ISSTA'12, SIGSOFT FSE'16
Workshops Co-Chair: ICSE 2015
Associate Editor: ACM TOSEM, 2008--2014
PC/ERC Member:
         SETTA'18, POPL'18, ICSE'18, SETTA'17, CAV'17, ISSTA'17,
         ICSE'17, ICSE'17, NIER, PLDI'16, OOPSLA'15 (ERC), ESEC/FSE'15, CAV'15, PLDI'15 (ERC),
         HVC 2014, FSE 2014 Visions and Challenges Track, Onward! 2014, ISSTA 2014,
         PSI 2014, PROMOTO 2013, OOPSLA 2013,
         ICSE'12, PLDI'12, DBTest'12, POPL'12 (ERC), OOPSLA'11, ESEC/FSE'11, SAS'11,
         PLAS'10, ISSTA'10, FSE'10, SAS'10, PLDI'10, ICSE'10 (Research Track), ICSE'10 (DS),
         ISSTA'09, WWW'09, CC'09, ICSE'09, NDSS'09,
         APLAS'08, HASE'08, SecureComm'08, CATARS'08, TASE'08, ICSE'08, WWW'08, NDSS'08,
         ETX'07, APLAS'07, FSE'06, SAS'06, TACAS'06, RAMSS'05.

Chair: ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award Committee, 2013.

Member: ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee, 2013.

Lecturer: Oregon Summer School, Eugene, OR, July 18-27, 2007.

Mentor: ICSE 2011 Mentoring Program, ICSE 2013 Mentoring Program.

Reviewer (journals): TOPLAS, TSE, TOSEM, JFP, I&C, HOSC.

Reviewer (conferences): POPL, PLDI, ICSE, FSE, CAV, SAS, ICALP, RTA, INFOCOM, NDSS, ACSAC.

NSF Panelist: 2005, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014

AFOSR Proposal Reviewer: 2007

Research Group [ for prospective students and visitors ]

I am working with the following outstanding researchers and graduate students:

Fengjuan Gao (Visiting PhD student, NJU, 2017 -- present)
Dr. Tianxiao Gu (Postdoctoral Scholar, 2017 -- present)
Tao Ji (Visiting PhD student, NUDT, 2017 -- present)
Nima Johari (Ph.D. student, 2014 -- present)
Suhua Lei (Ph.D. student, 2016 -- present)
Martin Velez (Ph.D. candidate, 2012 -- present)
Yu Wang (Visiting PhD student, NJU, 2017 -- present)
Dr. Qirun Zhang (Postdoctoral Scholar, 2014 -- present) -> tenure-track faculty at Georgia Tech

I am also working with the following excellent undergraduate students:

Yuanbo Li (2017 -- present)
Matt Le (2016 -- present)
Michael Yen (2014 -- present)

I am most proud of the awards and achievements of my students.

Former Group Members

Ke Wang (Ph.D. expected, 2018)
- Thesis: Capturing Solution Tactics for Effective, Scalable Personalized Learning
- Current employment: Researcher, Visa Research
Kenan Nalbant (M.S., 2018)
- Project: Oppel: An Adversarial Machine Learning Toolbox
- Current employment: Citadel
Dr. Zhoulai Fu (Postdoctoral Scholar, 2014 -- 2017)
- Current employment: Assistant Professor, ITU
Dr. Chengnian Sun (Postdoctoral Scholar, 2013 -- 2017)
- Current employment: Google (tenure-track faculty at Waterloo in July 2019)
Alexander Couvrette (M.S., 2017)
- Project: C++ Made Simple --- An Online Learning System
- Current employment: Developer, Wynn Casino, Las Vegas
Mehrdad Afshari (Ph.D., 2016)
- Thesis: Reimagining the Programming Experience
- Current employment: Google
- Awards: ACM SIGPLAN PLDI Distinguished Paper Award (2014)
Calvin Li (M.S., 2016)
- Project: Generating Raven's Progressive Matrices on iOS
- Current employment: Microsoft
Vu Minh Le (Ph.D., 2015)
- Thesis: Program Synthesis for Empowering End Users and Stress-Testing Compilers
- Current employment: Senior Research Software Engineer, Microsoft
- Awards: ACM SIGPLAN PLDI Distinguished Paper Award (2014)
Andreas Saebjoernsen (Ph.D., 2014)
- Thesis: Detecting Fine-Grained Similarity in Binaries
- Current employment: ~~LLNL~~ Uber
You Zhou (B.S., 2014)
- Current: Computer Science Master's Program at Stanford
- Awards: UCD CS "Citation of Excellence" (2014)
- Current employment: Facebook
Dr. Zhaopeng Tu (Postdoctoral Scholar, 07/2013 -- 07/2014; co-advisor)

Current employment: Senior Researcher, Tencent AI Lab

Zhongxian Gu (Ph.D., 2013)
- Thesis: Toward Effective Debugging by Capturing and Reusing Knowledge
- Current employment: Facebook
Fangqi (Sophia) Sun (Ph.D., 2013)
- Thesis: Program Analyses of Web Applications for Detecting Application-Specific Vulnerabilities
- Current employment: Google
Liang (Dennis) Xu (Ph.D., 2013)

Thesis: Techniques and Tools for Analyzing and Understanding Android Applications
Current employment: ~~Pandora~~ Instagram (Facebook)

Drew Schleck (B.S., 2013)
- Current employment: Google
- Awards: UCD CS "Citation of Excellence" (2013)
Earl Barr (Postdoctoral Scholar, 2009-2012)
- Current employment: Senior Lecturer, University College London
- Awards: I3P Fellow (2009-2010), UCD Outstanding Postdoc Finalist (2011-2012)
Taeho Kwon (Ph.D., 2011)
- Thesis: Detecting and Analyzing Insecure Component Integration
- Current employment: Researcher, Ministry of National Defense, Korea
- Awards: ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (2010)
Thanh Vo (M.S., 2011)
- Thesis: Automatic Detection of Floating-Point Exceptions
- Current employment: Sybase
Mark Gabel (Ph.D., 2011)
- Thesis: Inferring Programmer Intent and Related Errors from Software
- Current employment: ~~Assistant Professor, UT Dallas~~ Viv Labs, Chief Scientist
- Awards: ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Dissertation Award (2012)
  Zuhair A. Munir Best Dissertation Award (2013)
Steven Hillman (B.S., 2010)
- Current employment: Cisco
- Awards: UCD CS "Citation of Excellence" (2010)
Yuting Tim Xiao (B.S., 2010)
- Current employment: YouTube
- Awards: UCD CS "Citation of Excellence" (2010)
Lingxiao Jiang (Ph.D., 2009)
- Thesis: Scalable Detection of Similar Code: Techniques and Applications
- Current employment: Associate Professor, Singapore Management University
Jeffrey Yuen (M.S., 2009)

Current employment: Tata Consultancy Services

Gary Wassermann (Ph.D., 2008)
- Thesis: Techniques and Tools for Engineering Secure Web Applications
- Current employment: Riverbed
Jed Crandall (Ph.D., 2007, co-advisor)
- Thesis: Capturing and Analyzing Internet Worms
- Current employment: Associate Professor, University of New Mexico
- Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2009)
Ghassan Misherghi (M.S., 2007)
- Thesis: Hierarchical Delta Debugging
- Current employment: Google
Derrick Pallas (M.S., 2005, co-advisor)
- Current employment: Alexa Internet
Carl Gould (B.S., 2003; M.S. candidate, 2004)

Current employment: Inductive Automation
Awards: ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (2004)

Academic Visitors

Dr. Amin Alipour (Assistant Professor, Univ. of Houston, 12/2017 -- 04/2018)
Dr. Hongli Yang (Visiting Scholar, BJUT, 2016 -- 2017)
Hengbiao Yu (Visiting PhD student, NUDT, 2015 -- 2016)
Dingbao Xie (PhD student, Nanjing University, 09/2014 -- 09/2015)
Han Liu (PhD student, Tsinghua University, 04/2015 -- 09/2015)
Dr. Yuting Chen (Associate Professor, SJTU, 09/2014 -- 08/2015)
Ting Su (Ph.D. student from ECNU, 02/2014 -- 02/2015)
Hanfei Wang (Ph.D. student from Nanjing University, 12/2013 -- 12/2014)
Tianxiao Gu (PhD student, Nanjing University, 09/2013 -- 09/2014)
Yan Lei (PhD student, NUDT, 09/2013 -- 09/2014)
Dr. Guisheng Fan (Associate Professor, ECUST, Shanghai, 06/2013 -- 06/2014)
Dr. Liqiong Chen (Associate Professor, SIT, Shanghai, 06/2013 -- 06/2014)
Dr. Hao Zhong (Associate Professor, ISCAS => SJTU, 09/2012 -- 05/2014)
Linfeng Liu (Ph.D. student from XJTU, China, 09/2011 -- 03/2013)
Qirun Zhang (Ph.D. student from CUHK, 10/2012 -- 12/2012)
You Li (Ph.D. student from NJU, China, 09/2011 -- 09/2012)

Awards: OOPSLA Best Paper Award (2013)

Dong Qiu (Ph.D. student from SEU, China, 09/2011 -- 09/2012)
Enyi Tang (Ph.D. student, Nanjing University, China, 09/2008 -- 09/2009)
Kyung-Goo Doh (Professor, Hanyang University, Korea, 02/2005-08/2006)
Stephane Glondu (ENS Cachan, France, 06/2005-08/2005)

last modified: 2018.09.09