Yao Peisen Assistant Professor (ZJU 100 Young Professor) School of Cyber Science and Technology College of Computer Science and Technology Zhejiang University Office: Room 311, Tower B06, ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center Email: pyaoaa@zju.edu.cn Official homepage at ZJU: https://person.zju.edu.cn/pyao

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[ Publications ] [ Awards ] [ Software ] [ Service ] [ Teaching ] [ Students ] [ Misc ]

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News

• I am looking for self-motivated students (enrolled in 2025)! Please read this if you are a student interested in working with me (e.g., for Ph.D., Master, SRTP, and FYP).
• I am currently on the program committee of OOPSLA 2025, POPL 2025, ISSTA 2025, and CCS 2024. Please consider submitting a paper!

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Research Interests

I am broadly interested in programming languages, software engineering, and cybersecurity, focusing on techniques that make software secure, usable, and fast.

Current Research

• Program Analysis and Verification
  • Path sensitivity [PLDI'21a] [ISSTA'20], context sensitivity (via CFL-reachability) [OOPSLA'22a]
  • Alias/heap analysis [PLDI'24] [ISSTA'24] [TOSEM'23] [OOPSLA'22a]
  • Numerical analysis [ASE'23a] [ICSE'22] [OOPSLA'21] [ASE'21]
  • Concurrency analysis [USENIX Security'23], [PLDI21'b], change impact analysis [ASE'23b]
  • Fuzzing: directed [S&P'24], [S&P'22 ], seed sheduling [TDSC'23], hybrid [S&P'20], oracle [ESEC/FSE'21], configurations [ISSTA'21]
• Program Synthesis and Optimizations
  • Program synthesis for code search [ECOOP'23] and translation [ASPLOS'24]
  • Optimizations for Java collections [OOPSLA'22b ] and database-backed applications [ICSE'23]
• Logic and Automted Reasoning
  • Symbolic abstraction: application in synthesizing best abstract transformers [OOPSLA'21]
  • A formalization of conditional independence [ICSE'24] (for causal discovery)

Selected Publications

• PLDI 2024: Falcon: A Fused Approach to Path-Sensitive Sparse Data Dependence Analysis
  Peisen Yao, Jinguo Zhou, Xiao Xiao, Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang
  The ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (CCF Rank A) [slide]
  The first PLDI paper from ZJU!
• ASPLOS 2024: SIRO: Empowering Version Compatibility in Intermediate Representations via Program Synthesis
  Bowen Zhang, Wei Chen, Peisen Yao, Chengpeng Wang, Wensheng Tang, and Charles Zhang
  ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (CCF Rank A)
• ISSTA 2024: Precise Compositional Buffer Overflow Detection via Heap Disjointness
  Yiyuan Guo, Peisen Yao, and Charles Zhang
  The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (CCF Rank A)
• TOSEM 24: Octopus: Scaling Value-Flow Analysis via Parallel Collection of Realizable Path Conditions
  Wensheng Tang, Dejun Dong, Shijie Li, Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Jinguo Zhou, and Charles Zhang
  ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (CCF Rank A)
• ICSE 2024: Enabling Runtime Verification of Causal Discovery Algorithms with Automated Conditional Independence Reasoning
  Pingchuan Ma, Zhenlan Ji, Peisen Yao, Shuai Wang, and Kui Ren
  The 2024 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (CCF Rank A)
• S&P 2024: Titan: Efficient Multi-target Directed Greybox Fuzzing
  Heqing Huang, Peisen Yao, Hung-Chun Chiu, Yiyuan Guo, and Charles Zhang
  The 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) (CCF Rank A)
• ASE 2023a: Demystifying Template-based Invariant Generation for Bit-Vector Programs
  Peisen Yao, Jingyu Ke, Jiahui Sun, Hongfei Fu, Rongxin Wu, and Kui Ren
  The 2023 IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering Conference (CCF Rank A)
• ASE 2023b: DCLink: Bridging Data Constraint Changes and Implementations in FinTech Systems
  Wensheng Tang, Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Xianjin Fu, Gang Fan, and Charles Zhang
  The 2023 IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering Conference (CCF Rank A)
• ECOOP 2023: Synthesizing Conjunctive Queries for Code Search
  Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Wensheng Tang, Gang Fan, and Charles Zhang
  European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (CCF Rank B)
• TDSC 2023: Balance Seed Scheduling via Monte Carlo Planning
  Heqing Huang, Hung-Chun Chiu, Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, and Charles Zhang
  IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (CCF Rank A)
• ICSE 2023: Verifying Data Constraint Equivalence in FinTech Systems
  Chengpeng Wang, Gang Fan, Peisen Yao, Fuxiong Pan, and Charles Zhang
  The 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (CCF Rank A)
• USENIX Security 2023: Place Your Locks Well: Understanding and Detecting Lock Misuse Bugs
  Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, Chengfeng Ye, and Charles Zhang
  The 32nd USENIX Security Symposium (CCF Rank A)
• TOSEM 2023: Anchor: Fast and Precise Value-Flow Analysis for Containers via Memory Orientation
  Chengpeng Wang, Wenyang Wang, Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Jinguo Zhou, Xiao Xiao, and Charles Zhang
  ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (CCF Rank A)
• OOPSLA 2022a: Indexing the Extended Dyck-CFL Reachability for Context-Sensitive Program Analysis
  Qingkai Shi, Yongchao Wang, Peisen Yao, and Charles Zhang
  The 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (CCF Rank A)
• OOPSLA 2022b: Complexity-Guided Container Replacement Synthesis
  Chengpeng Wang, Peisen Yao, Wensheng Tang, Qingkai Shi, and Charles Zhang
  The 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (CCF Rank A)
  ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award
• ICSE 2022: Precise Divide-By-Zero Detection with Affirmative Evidence
  Yiyuan Guo, Jinguo Zhou, Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, and Charles Zhang
  The 2022 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (CCF Rank A)
• S&P 2022: BEACON: Directed Grey-Box Fuzzing with Provable Path Pruning
  Heqing Huang, Yiyuan Guo, Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang
  The 43rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) (CCF Rank A)
  Google Research Paper Rewards
• PhD Thesis: Solidifying and Scaling SMT-based Program Analysis, 2022. HKUST
  Honorable Mention in the CSE Best Dissertation Award, HKUST
• OOPSLA 2021: Program Analysis via Efficient Symbolic Abstraction
  Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Heqing Huang, and Charles Zhang
  The 36th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (CCF Rank A)
  (One of the algorithms has been integrated into SVF)
• ASE 2021: Transcode: Detecting Status Code Mapping Errors in Large-Scale Systems
  Wensheng Tang, Yikun Hu, Gang Fan, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Guangyuan Bai, Pengcheng Wang, and Charles Zhang
  The 2021 IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering Conference (CCF Rank A)
• ESEC/FSE 2021: Skeletal Approximation Enumeration for SMT Solver Testing
  Peisen Yao, Heqing Huang, Wensheng Tang, Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang
  The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (CCF Rank A)
• ISSTA 2021: Fuzzing SMT Solvers via Two-Dimensional Input Space Exploration
  Peisen Yao, Heqing Huang, Wensheng Tang, Qingkai Shi, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang
  The 30th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (CCF Rank A)
• PLDI 2021a: Path-Sensitive Sparse Analysis without Path Conditions
  Qingkai Shi, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, and Charles Zhang
  The 42nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (CCF Rank A)
• PLDI 2021b: Canary: Practical Static Detection of Inter-Thread Value-Flow Bugs
  Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, and Charles Zhang
  The 42nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (CCF Rank A)
• ISSTA 2020: Fast Bit-Vector Satisfiability
  Peisen Yao, Qingkai Shi, Heqing Huang, and Charles Zhang
  The 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (CCF Rank A)
• S&P 2020: Pangolin: Incremental Hybrid Fuzzing with Polyhedral Path Abstraction
  Heqing Huang, Peisen Yao, Rongxin Wu, Qingkai Shi, and Charles Zhang
  The 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) (CCF Rank A)

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Honors & Awards

• NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Program (Overseas) 国家高层次青年人才计划
• Google Research Paper Rewards
• ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award (OOPSLA'21)
• Qizhen Scholar of ZJU (浙江大学启真优秀青年学者)
• Honorable Mention in the CSE Best Dissertation Award, HKUST
• Outstanding Undergraduate Award, HUST
• Second Place in Linpack Track (We broke the world record), ASC'14
• Technical Excellence Award, Unique Hackday

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Software

• Current Projects

  • canary: A program analysis and verification framework (alias analysis, SMT solving, ...)

  • efmc: An SMT-based software model checker (ASE'23a)

  • arlib: A library for playing with various automated reasoning tasks, such as model counting, Optimization Modulo Theory (OMT) solving, etc.


• Former Projects

  • Pinpoint: An SMT-based, industrial-strength static analysis framework (PLDI'21b, ASE'21, PLDI'21a, PLDI'21b, ICSE'22, OOPSLA'22a, USENIX Security'23, TOSEM'23...)
    

    • Pinpoint has found hundreds of bugs in many mature and fundamental open-source projects, including Linux Kernel, FreeBSD, MySQL, Firefox, HBase, OpenSSL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, FFmpeg, Apache HTTPd, Git, Python, Memcached, Redis, Tmux, Vim, Mariadb, and many others
    • Pinpoint was commercialized at Sourcebrella Inc, which was acquired by Ant Group in 2020.

  • Pangolin: A fuzzing framework (Pangolin S&P'20, Beacon S&P'22, BeliefFuzz TDSC'23, Titan S&P'24)

    • A partial of of detected vulnerabilities in open-source projects can be found here
    • We received the Google Research Paper Rewards and two Huawei Distinguished Collaborator Awards for deploying our fuzzers
    • Beacon is available here

  • EqDAC: An equivalence checker for verifying data constraint equivalence (ICSE'23)

    • EqDAC has been deployed in Ant Group, a global FinTech company with 1 billion activeusers

  • Cres: Program synthesis for code optimization [OOPSLA'22b ] and code search [ECOOP'23]

  • smtfuzz: A fuzz testing tool for SMT solvers (ESEC/FSE'21, ISSTA'21)

    • smtfuzz has found hundreds of bugs in several state-of-the-art SMT solvers and first-order theorem provers, such as Z3, CVC5, Yices2, STP, Boolector, MathSAT5, SMTInterpol, OpenSMT, SMT-RAT, DReal, SPASS, and Vampire
    • You may try a simplified implementation of the random formula generator by "pip install smtfuzz"

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Service

• Chair or Co-chair: CCF ChinaSoft'23优秀博士生论坛
• Technical Program Committee: OOPSLA'25 (first PC from ZJU), POPL'25 (first PC from ZJU), ISSTA'25, SETTA'24, CCS'24, EuroS&P'24, ISSTA'24, RAID'23, PLDI'23 (first PC from ZJU), ChinaSoft'24, ChinaSoft'23
• Artifact Evaluation Committee: PLDI'24, OOPSLA'24, ICSE'24, PLDI'23, USENIX Security'23, MobiSys'23, ATC'22, OSDI'22
• Program Committee of other Tracks: ASE'24 (Industry), SNAER'24 (Demo), OOPSLA'23 (SRC)
• Conference Reviewer/Sub-reviewer/Co-reviewer: ATVA'22, ISSRE'21, ESEC/FSE'19, ISSTA'19, ASE'18, VMCAI'17
• Journal Reviewer: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD), IEEE Transactions on Reliability (TR), 电子学报，软件学报，计算机学报

Mentoring

• Long-term mentor of SIGPLAN-M

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Teaching

• Software Security (Fall 2024, Software Analysis Part), UG Course, ZJU
• Principles of Compilers (Spring 2024), UG Course, ZJU
• 信息安全前沿技术和研究方法论, 研究生课程 (2023 春夏, 2024 春夏), 形式化方法部分, ZJU
• COMP4632: Practicing CyberSecurity: Attacks and Counter-measures, Teaching Assistant, HKUST
• COMP3021: Java Programming, Teaching Assistant, HKUST
• COMP3511: Operating System, Teaching Assistant, HKUST

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Students

• Current Students:
  • Postgraduate Students: Weiqi Wang (Master from 23), Yuan Li (Ph.D. from 23), Hanrui Zuo (Ph.D. from 24), Zinan Gu (Master from 24), Guowei Tian (Master from 24)
  • Final Year Project: Chenhao Gao, Hanyun Jiang, Yaoyang Ye, Jiening Siow
• Former Mentees
  • Intern: Ruiyu Zhou (UG@CUHK(SZ), 2023)
  • Final Year Project: Ruqing Yang, Xutao Zhou, Yitong Li, Xinyue Cai, Haobai Yin, Haowei Cao, Yichi Zhang, Mingming Luo

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Misc

• Tips on writing a research paper by Thomas Reps
• Writing a technical paper by Michael Ernst
• Doing research in software analysis: lessons and tips by Zhendong Su
• Some interesting papers
• Automated reasoning for logics and programs (ing...)
• Lecture notes on principles of compliers (ing...)