About me:

I broadly study Programming Languages, and their synergy with Systems and Software Security. Particularly, I am passionate about advancing program analysis and verification techniques to establish the reliability and security of software, especially in complex industrial settings. I earned my bachelor's and PhD degrees from the Southern University of Science and Technology in 2019 and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2023, respectively. I am open to various kinds of collaborations; drop me an email if you are interested.

Publications:

1. Manta: Hybrid-Sensitive Type Inference Toward Type-Assisted Bug  Detection for Stripped Binaries. Chengfeng Ye, Yuandao Cai, Anshunkang Zhou, Heqing Huang, Hao Ling, Charles Zhang. The 2025 ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'25). [PDF] 

2. Boosting Path-sensitive Value Flow Analysis via Removal of Redundant Summaries. Yongchao Wang, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The 2025 International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'25).  [PDF] 

3. GiantSan: Efficient Operation-Level Memory Sanitization with Segment Folding. Hao Ling, Heqing Huang, Chengpeng Wang, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS).  [PDF] 

4. Efficient Fuzzing Infrastructure for Pointer-to-Object Association. Hao Ling, Heqing Huang, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM).  [PDF] 

5. Plankton: Reconciling Binary Code and Debug Information. Anshunkang Zhou, Chengfeng Ye, Heqing Huang, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The 2024 ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'24). [PDF] 

6. GIANTSAN: Efficient Memory Sanitization with Segment Folding. Hao Ling, Heqing Huang, Chengpeng Wang, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The 2024 ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'24). [PDF]  (Best Paper Award)

7. Automatically Inspecting Thousands of Static Bug Warnings with Large Language Model: How Far Are We? Cheng Wen, Yuandao Cai, Bin Zhang, Jie Su, Zhiwu Xu, Dugang Liu, Shengchao Qin, Zhong Ming, Cong Tian. The ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD 2024). [PDF]

8. When Threads Meet Interrupts: Effective Static Detection of Interrupt-Based Deadlocks in Linux. Chengfeng Ye, Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The 2024 USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'24). [PDF] 

9. Unleashing the Power of Type-Based Call Graph Construction by Using Regional Pointer Information. Yuandao Cai, Yibo Jin, Charles Zhang. The 2024 USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'24). [PDF] [Appendix]

10. A Cocktail Approach to Practical Call Graph Construction. Yuandao Cai, Charles Zhang. The 2023 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Objected Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA'23). [PDF]

11. Place Your Locks Well: Understanding and Detecting Lock Misuse Bugs. Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, Chengfeng Ye, Charles Zhang. The 2023 USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security'23). [PDF] [Appendix]

12. Peahen: Fast and Precise Static Deadlock Detection via Context Reduction. Yuandao Cai, Chengfeng Ye, Qingkai Shi, Charles Zhang.  The 2022 ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE'22). [PDF]

13. Canary: Practical Static Detection of Inter-thread Value-Flow Bugs. Yuandao Cai, Peisen Yao, Charles Zhang. The 2021 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI'21). [PDF]

Teaching:

• COMP1021 - Introduction to Computer Science, HKUST, 2022 - 2023, Fall, Teaching Assistant

• COMP3711 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms, HKUST, 2021 - 2022, Fall, Teaching Assistant

• COMP4901N - Competitive Programming in Cybersecurity I, HKUST, 2020 - 2021, Fall, Teaching Assistant

• COMP4111 - Software Engineering Practices, HKUST, 2019 - 2020, Spring, Teaching Assistant

• CS304 - Software Engineering, 2018 - 2019, SUSTech, Spring, Teaching Assistant

• CS309 - Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, SUSTech, 2018 - 2019, Fall, Teaching Assistant

• CS102 - Introduction to Programming Language, SUSTech, 2018 - 2019, Spring, Teaching Assistant