Highlights

Congrats to Yuandao on his OOPSLA 2023 paper on call graph construction.

Congrats to Heqing on his S&P 2024 paper on fuzzing (again!).

Congrats to Wensheng on his ASE 2023 paper acceptance. Joint work with Ant Group.

Congrats to Prof. Yao on winning the Honorable-mention of best CSE PhD dissertation award.

Congrats to Chengpeng on his ICSE 2023 paper acceptance. Joint work with Ant Group.

Congrats to Chengpeng on winning the distinguished paper award at OOPSLA 2022.

Sourcebrella acquired by Ant Group after a four-year and incredible journey of commercializing Pinpoint!

Research

My general reseach interest centers around the use of both static and dynamic programm analysis techniques for making complex software systems more secure and reliable.

The 10-million-lines static analysis statement: "to achieve all-sensitive precision and sublinear scalability while SIMULTANEOUSLY addressing the CODA requirements : achieve scalability by being continuous both in time, incremental, and in space, accumulative (Continuous); be open for defining customized source-code test cases through APIs or DSLs (Open); respect the fact that source code is largely unavailable(Dark code); understand assembled program dependency (Aassembled) introduced by frameworks and middleware.

1. Heqing Huang, Peisen Yao, Hung-Chun Chiu, Yiyuan Guo, Charles Zhang. Titan : Efficient Multi-target Directed Greybox Fuzzing, In S&P'24: The 45rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, USA, May 20-23, 2024

2. Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. A Cocktail Approach to Practical Call Graph Construction, In OOPLSA2023:The ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, Sun 22 - Fri 27 October 2023 Cascais, Portugal

3. Wensheng Tang, Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Xianjin Fu, Gang Fan, Charles Zhang. DCLink: Bridging Data Constraint Changes and Implementations in FinTech Systems, In ASE2023: 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Sept. 11 - 15, 2023

4. Heqing Huang, Hung-Chun Chiu, Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, Charles Zhang. Balance Seed Scheduling via Monte Carlo Planning, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing

5. Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Wensheng Tang, Gang Fan, and Charles Zhang, Synthesizing Conjunctive Queries for Code Search, In ECOOP 2023: European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, July, 2023.

6. Zongyin Hao, Quanfeng Huang, Chengpeng Wang, Jianfeng Wang, Yushan Zhang, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang, Detecting Logical Bugs in Database Management Systems with Approximate Query Synthesis, In ATC 2023: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, July, 2023.

7. Chengpeng Wang, Gang Fan, Peisen Yao, Fuxiong Pan, Charles Zhang Verifying Data Constraint Equivalence in FinTech Systems, In ICSE 2023: the 45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, Melbourne, Australia, May 14-20, 2023

8. Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, Chengfeng Ye, Charles Zhang Place Your Locks Well: Understanding and Detecting Lock Misuse Bugs, In USENIX Security 2023: the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium. August 9-11, 2023, Anaheim, CA, USA

9. Chengpeng Wang, Wenyang Wang, Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi,Jinguo Zhou, Xiao Xiao, Charles Zhang Anchor: Fast and Precise Value-Flow Analysis for Containers via Memory Orientation, In TOSEM: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, April 26, 2023 paper

10. Rongxin Wu, Minglei Chen,Chengpeng Wang, Gang Fan, Jiguang Qiu,and Charles Zhang, Accelerating Build Dependency Error Detection via Virtual Build, In ASE 2022:The 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Mon 10 - Fri 14 October 2022 Oakland Center, Michigan, United States paper

11. Qingkai Shi, Yongchao Wang, Peisen Yao and Charles Zhang Indexing the Extended Dyck-CFL Reachability for Context-Sensitive Program Analysis, In OOPSLA 2022 : The ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, December, 2022, Auckland, New Zealand paper

12. Yuandao Cai, Chengfeng Ye, Qingkai Shi and Charles Zhang Peahen: Fast and Precise Static Deadlock Detection via Context Reduction, In ESEC/FSE 2022 : The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, November, 2022, Singapore paper

13. Jiajun Gong, Wuqi Zhang, Charles Zhang, and Tao Wang. Surakav: Generating Realistic Traces for a Strong Website Fingerprinting Defense, In S&P'22: The 43rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, USA, May 23-26, 2022 paper

14. (OOPSLA Distinguished Paper) Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Wensheng Tang, Qingkai Shi, and Charles Zhang, Complexity-Guided Container Replacement Synthesis, In OOPSLA 2022 : The ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, December, 2022, Auckland, New Zealand paper

15. Yiyuan Guo, Jinguo Zhou, Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Charles Zhang. Precise Divide-By-Zero Detection with Affirmative Evidence In ICSE 2022: 44th International Conference on Software Engineering, Pittsburgh, USA, May 21-29, 2022 paper

16. Heqing Huang, Yiyuan Guo, Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Charles Zhang Beacon: Directed Grey-Box Fuzzing with Provable Path Pruning In S&P'22: The 43rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, USA, May 23-26, 2022 paper

17. Wensheng Tang, Yikun Hu, Gang Fan, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Guangyuan Bai, Pengcheng Wang, and Charles Zhang. Transcode: Detecting Status Code Translation Errors in Large-Scale Systems. In ASE'21: The 2021 IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering Conference paper

18. Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Heqing Huang, Charles Zhang. Program Analysis via Efficient Symbolic Abstraction In OOPSLA'21: The 36th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications. paper

19. Peisen Yao, Heqing Huang, Tang Wensheng, Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, Charles Zhang Skeletal Approximation Enumeration for SMT Solver Testing In FSE 2021:29th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, Aug 23-27, 2021 paper

20. Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, and Charles Zhang. Canary: Practical Static Detection of Inter-Thread Value-Flow Bugs. In PLDI 2021: The 42nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 20-25, Virtual, UK, https://doi.org/10.1145/3453483.3454099. (draft)

21. Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang. Path-Sensitive Sparse Analysis without Path Conditions. In PLDI 2021: The 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation , June 20-25, 2021, Virtual, https://doi.org/10.1145/3453483.3454086(draft)

22. Peisen Yao, Heqing Huang, Tang Wensheng, Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, Charles Zhang Fuzzing SMT Solvers via Two-Dimensional Input Space Exploration In ISSTA 2021:The 30th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 11-17 July, 2021 paper

23. Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Heqing Huang, Charles Zhang Fast Bit-Vector Satisfiability In ISSTA 2020: The 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 18-22 July, 2020
    paper

24. Gang Fan, Chengpeng Wang, Rongxin Wu, Qingkai Shi, Charles Zhang Escaping Dependency Hell: Finding Build Dependency Errors with the Unified Dependency Graph In ISSTA 2020:The 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 18-22 July, 2020
    paper

25. Heqing Huang, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Charles Zhang Pangolin: Incremental Hybrid Fuzzing with Polyhedral Path Abstraction In IEEE S&P 2020:: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, USA, May, 2020. paper

26. Qingkai Shi, Charles Zhang, Pipelining Bottom-up Data Flow Analysis, In ICSE 2020: The 42nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, Seoul, Korea, May, 2020
    paper

27. Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, Gang Fan, Charles Zhang, Conquering the Extensional Scalability Problem for Value-Flow Analysis Frameworks In ICSE 2020:The 42nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, Seoul, Korea, May, 2020
    paper

28. (ICSE Distinguished Paper) Gang Fan, Rongxin Wu, Qingkai Shi, Xiao Xiao, Jinguo Zhou, Charles Zhang SMOKE: Scalable Path-Sensitive Memory Leak Detection for Millions of Lines of Code In ICSE 2019: The 41st International Conference on Software Engineering, Montreal, Canada, May, 2019. paper
    

29. Qingkai Shi, Xiao Xiao, Rongxin Wu, Jinguo Zhou, Fan Gang and Charles Zhang Pinpoint: Fast and Precise Sparse Value Flow Analysis for Million Lines of Code. In PLDI 2018: the 39th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation. Philadelphia, USA, June, 2018 paper

View all publications

I am fortunate to work with the following students:

In progress:

Wensheng Tang, Yongchao Wang, Yiyuan Guo, Chengpeng Wang, Yuandao Cai, Maryam Masoudian, Anshunkang Zhou, Hao Ling, Chengfeng Ye, HongChun Chiu, Bowen Zhang, Yibo Jin, Wei Chen, Sixiang Peng, Jiaxin Song, Bangyan DU, Yuheng Tang (RA), Yuzhang Zhu(RA) Wing Piu Lee (RA), Yihui Qiu(RA)

Alumni with last known employment:

Heqing Huang(Post Doc), Post Doc, ETH

Peisen Yao , Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University

Jiajun Gong, Post Doc, NUS

Kexin Ma (M.Phil)

Qingkai Shi (Ph.D), Ant Financial

Gang Fan (Ph.D) , Staff Engineer, SourceBrella Inc., now at Ant Financial

Rongxin Wu (Post-Doc), Associate Professor, Xiamen University

Yepang Liu (Post-Doc), Assistant Professor, SUSTech

Richard Xiao (Ph.D, Post-Doc), SourceBrella Inc. (Founder, CEO), now at Ant Financial

Jinguo(Andy) Zhou (Post-Doc), SourceBrella Inc. (Co-Founder), now at Ant Financial

Qirun Zhang (Post Doc) Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech

Peng Liu (Ph.D), Researcher, IBM T.J.Watson Research Lab

Jeff Huang (Ph.D), Assitant Professor, Texas A&M University

Lingjie Huang (M.Phil)

Yushan Zhang (M.Phil), Software Engineer, Tencent

Bin Xu (M.Phil) Software Engineer, Facebook

Fan Yu(M.Phil), Software Engineer, Pinduoduo.

COMP3511: Operating Systems (Fall 2020)
COMP4111: Software Engineering Practices(Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2016)
COMP3021: Java Programming (Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2015, Spring 2014; Spring, 2013; Spring 2012)
COMP5111: Fundamentals of Software Analysis (Spring 2014; Spring, 2013; Spring 2011; Fall, 2009; Fall, 2008)
COMP3111: Introduction to Software Engineerings (Fall 2019,Fall, 2014;Fall, 2011;Fall, 2010; Spring, 2010,Spring 2009)
COMP610: Topics in Engineering Enterprise Middleware Platforms. (Spring, 2009)

Professional Activities

1. Editorial Services

   IEEE TSE: Associate Editor, 2015-2018

2. Program Committee Services

   ASE:2022(TPC), 2018 (TPC),   2016(Demo),    2013 (TPC)
   ECOOP:    2016(ERC)
   FSE: 2022 (Industrial track), 2019 (TPC),    2014 (TPC, DS, SRC)     2012 (TPC, NIER)
   ICSE: 2024 TPC,   2014 (TPC)     2012 (Demo, SRC)     2009 (Demo)
   ISSTA: 2023 TPC,    2014 (TPC)     2012 (TPC)
   OOPSLA:     2015 (TPC)    2014 (ERC)     2012 (ERC)     2011 (TPC)
   VMCAI:    2018(PC)
   

3. Chairs

   ISSTA:    2019 (Doctoral Symposium Co-Chair)
   ICSE:    2017 (SRC Co-Chair)
   ICSE:    2016 (Proceedings Chair)
   PLDI:    2012 (Pacific Publicity Chair)
   AOSD:    2013 (Demo Chair)
   APSEC:   2012 (Postgraduate Symposium Chair)
   InternetWare: 2014 (Co-Chair)

4. Keynotes and inviated talks

   Invited Talk:, Finding good research problems, ICSE 2022 New Faculty Symposium, May 16, Pittsburgh, USA
   Keynote: Enterprise-Scale Static Analysis, The Second International Conference on Code Quality Sat 23 Apr 2022 Innopolis, Kazan, Russia
   Keynote: Enterprise-Scale Static Analysis: A Pinpoint Experience, Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering Theories, Tools and Applications, Beijing, China, Nov. 25-27, 2021
   Invited Talk:Enterprise-Scale Static Analysis: A Pinpoint Experience, Splash Rebase 2020:,Sun 15 - Sat 21 November 2020, online
   Invited Talk: Balancing teaching, service and research, ICSE 2020 New Faculty Symposium, July 14, 2020, online
   Keynote: Stop the bleeding from the heart, IEEE SCAM 2017: Source Code Analysis and Manipulation Working Conference, September 17-18, 2017, Shanghai, China

Group Activities

1. Group hiking of HKUST hills pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5
2. Group Photos at HKUST or anywhere else pic1
3. Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (FSE 2010) pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5
4. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (ICSE 2011) pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5 pic6 pic7 pic8
5. Toronto, Ontario, Canada (ISSTA 2011) pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5 pic6 pic7
6. Venice, Italy, (SAS 2011) pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5

Bio

Charles Zhang is a professor and the director of the Cybersecurity Lab in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He likes using program analysis techniques to improve software reliability. He was an associate editor of IEEE TSE and served on many organizational and technical committees of leading international conferences. His research awards include the distinguished paper awards of PLDI, OOPSLA, and ICSE, as well as the ACM SIGSOFT Doctoral Dissertation Award. His notable industrial impact includes the commercialization of research through Sourcebrella, acquired by the Ant Group, the research collaboration award from Ant Group, and the first to win twice the Huawei distinguished collaborator award. He worked as a software engineer in Motorola Inc, an expert advisor to Huawei, and an expert security panelist of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. His research is supported by Research Grant Council, Innovation and Technology Fund, and grants from Huawei, Ant, Tencent, TCL, Microsoft, and IBM. Charles obtained his Ph.D, M.Sc, and B.Sc. with honours, all from University of Toronto.