Qian Zhang

I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, Riverside. Prior to that, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at UCLA during 2019-2022. I worked with Prof. Miryung Kim on software developer tools for democrotizing heterogeneous computing. I got my Ph.D. from CUHK in 2018, adviced by Prof. Johnny Xu.

My research lies at the unique intersection of software engineering, big data analytics, and heterogeneous computing. The vision of my research is to democratize the development of emerging software (such as ML, heterogeneous applications, big data analytics) by reinventing software testing, debugging, and analysis tools. I have been selected as one of the eight MIT EECS rising stars in Systems (broadly defined) in 2021. I have received awards such as ACM SIGSOFT Research Highlights, Regents Faculty Fellowship, and GHC Faculty Scholarship. My research is funded by NSF, Cisco, UCR Senate, and SoCal OASIS.

• Mar 2025: SynToken accepted to FSE 2025 (FSE-IVR). Congrats to Yuxin.
• Jan 2025: Thank you OASIS, for funding our project on failure-guided testing for autonomous vehicles.
• Jan 2025: Our paper on delta debugging for MLIR compilers has been accepted to FSE 2025. Congrats to Jiyuan and Yuxin.
• Jan 2025: Congrats to Tony for receiving the Undergrad Minigrant Award.
• Dec 2024: Our work on automated performance benchmark generation for big data analytics is available here.
• Aug 2024: Our tool paper on finding similar Github Repositories is accepted ICSME'24. Congrats to Masud.
• July 2024: Our research on Collaborative Research: SHF: Small: Software Developer Tools for Enabling Heterogeneous Computing was funded! We will be investigating SE techniques in the domain of heterogeneous computing with our collaborators from UCLA.
• July 2024: Our research paper on leveraging LLMs in code tasks is accepted to ISSTA'24. Congrats to Yuxin.
• July 2024: Proud to announce that I received a UCR Senate Award.
• June 2024: I am serving on the FSE 2025 program committee! Please consider submiting a paper!
• Jan 2024: Congrats to Yuxin for receiving the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.
• April 2024: Proud to announce that I received a Cisco Research Award.
• April 2024: Our short paper on graph-based test generation is accepted to FSE'24. Congrats to Zhaorui.
• Mar 2024: Our paper on understanding Malware software repositories is accepted to theWebConf'24 (formerly known as WWW.) Congrats to Nishat and Masud.
• Jan 2024: Congrats to Zhaorui for getting the ICSE Travel Award.
• Dec 2023: Our work on augmenting greybox fuzzing with generative AI is available on Arxiv.
• Nov 2023: I am serving as the Publications chair for SPLASH 2024.
• Oct 2023: I am serving on the ICSME 2024 program committee! Please consider submitting a paper!
• July 2023: I was awarded a Regents Faculty Fellowship grant 2023-2024!
• July 2023: I am serving on the FSE 2024 program committee. Please consider submitting a paper!
• June 2023: I was selected as a GHC Faculty Scholarship!
• May 2023: Our paper HFuzz accepted to FSE 2023! Congrats to Jiyuan and all collaborators!
• Other news

• Current Students
  • Yuxin Qiu (MS/PhD), 2022.
  • Zhaorui Yang (MS/PhD), 2023.
  • Abhijit Kulkarni (MS/PhD), 2024.
• Graduated Advisees
  • former students at UCLA and CUHK

• CS 182 Software Testing and Verification (Fall2022, Fall2023，Fall2024)
• CS 180 Introduction to Software Engineering (Winter2023, Winter2024, Spring2025)
• CS 260 Advanced Topics in Software Engineering (Spring2023)
• CS 206 Advanced Software Testing and Analysis (Winter2025)

• Publication Chair:
  SPLASH, 2024
• Session Chair:
  ICSME Research Track, Smell/Debt session, 2021
• Program Committee:
  ISSTA Research Track, 2025
  FSE Research Track, 2025
  ICSME Research Track, 2024
  ISSTA Research Track, 2024
  FSE Research Track, 2024
  FSE Artifact Evaluation Track, 2024
  ICSE Research Track, first round 2024, second round 2024
  ISSTA Research Track, 2024
  FSE Tool Demonstration Track, 2022, 2023
  ASE Tool Demonstration Track, 2023
  ISSTA Artifact Evaluation Track, 2023
  ICSME Research Track, 2022
  FUZZING, 2022, 2023
  ICSME Research Track, 2021
  SIGDA Student Research Forum at ASP-DAC, 2020, 2021, 2022
• Journal Reviewer:
  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 2022, 2024
  IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
  IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC), 2019
  IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT), 2019
• External Reviewer: ICFPT'2013, ICCD'2013, ICCD'2014, AC'2016, DFT'2017