王焕廷

Huanting Wang

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the School of Computer Science at the University of Leeds, where I was fortunate to be advised by Professor Zheng Wang at the Intelligent Systems Software Lab.

My research focuses on practical machine learning, program analysis, software security, and optimization, aiming to make intelligent software engineering tools more accessible, reliable, and deployable.

My research interests include:

• Applied Machine Learning: Developing precise, automated, and robust ML/LLM-based techniques for program understanding, software engineering tasks, and deployment-time reliability.
• Software Security: Applying ML, including LLMs, program analysis, and system-level techniques to detect bugs and vulnerabilities. My recent work has uncovered over 100 bugs and more than 50 CVEs in real-world projects. I am also exploring CHERI-based memory safety and security analysis.
• Code Optimization: Leveraging ML, reinforcement learning, and statistical evaluation to optimize programs and systems, with a focus on runtime efficiency and deployment issues in distributed systems and services.

PhD Opportunities

Our group is looking for self-motivated PhD students, and scholarships may be available for outstanding candidates. Have a look at my research interests and recent publications — if any of those grab you, send me an email with a CV and a short text describing your background. I am also open-minded: if you have a great idea you would like to pursue, get in touch!

Applicants should meet the School's entry requirements.

• [Aug, 2026] I will attend the VeTSS. See you in Exeter!
• [June, 2026] CapOpt has been accepted to OOPSLA 26 after a minor revision!
• [June, 2026] Selected for the ICURe Discover Programme by Innovate UK!
• [May, 2026] One paper on CHERI security has been accepted to ISMM 26!
• [Apr, 2026] Selected for the Northern Mentor Programme, paired with Paul Ridgway.
• [Mar, 2026] I will attend the CHERI Blossoms 2026 and give a talk at Microsoft about LLM-based security. See you in Cambridge!
• [Jan, 2026] I will attend the HiPEAC 2026. See you in Poland!
• [July, 2025] I will attend the VeTSS. See you in Glasgow!
• [June, 2025] Received the Chinese Award for Outstanding Students Abroad!
• [May, 2025] SecureMind has been accepted to ISMM 25. See you in Seoul!
• [Jan, 2025] PROM received the Distinguished Paper Award at CGO 25!
• [Jan, 2025] Scenario has been accepted to TDSC!
• [Nov, 2024] PROM has been accepted to CGO 25! See you in Las Vegas!
• [Oct, 2024] Received AI SuperConnector Award for AI4Secure!
• [Aug, 2024] I will attend the VeTSS. See you in Bristol!
• [June, 2024] I will give a talk at the LIDA Workshop. See you in Leeds!
• [May, 2024] I will attend the HiPEAC ACACES 2024 this summer. See you in Italy!
• [Mar, 2024] UPBEAT has been accepted to ISSTA 24!
• [Jan, 2024] I will present a poster in the CGO 24 SRC. See you in Edinburgh!
• [Dec, 2023] Concoction has been accepted to ICSE 24! See you in Lisbon!
• [Dec, 2023] Received Mitacs Globalink Research Award!

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Google Scholar | DBLP

[CGO '25] Enhancing Deployment-time Predictive Model Robustness for Code Analysis and Optimization
Huanting Wang, Patrick Lenihan, Zheng Wang
The International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO 2025) (Artifact Evaluated!) , 2025.

Premier ACM Conference in Compiler Optimization (CORE A)

Distinguished Paper Award Preprint Code and dataset

[ICSE '24] Combining Structured Static Code Information and Dynamic Symbolic Traces for Software Vulnerability Prediction
Huanting Wang, Zhanyong Tang, Shin Hwei Tan, Jie Wang, Yuzhe Liu, Hejun Fang, Chunwei Xia, Zheng Wang
The 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024) (Artifact Evaluated!) , 2024.

Premier ACM Conference in Software Engineering (CORE A*) Preprint Code and dataset

[CC '22] Automating Reinforcement Learning Architecture Design for Code Optimization
Huanting Wang, Zhanyong Tang, Cheng Zhang, Jiaqi Zhao, Chris Cummins, Hugh Leather, Zheng Wang
The 31st ACM SIGPLAN 2022 International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC 2022) (Artifact Evaluated!) , 2022.

Premier ACM Conference in Compiler Construction (CORE A) Preprint Code and dataset

[TIFS '21] Combining Graph-Based Learning With Automated Data Collection for Code Vulnerability Detection
Huanting Wang, Guixin Ye, Zhanyong Tang, Shin Hwei Tan, Songfang Huang, Dingyi Fang, Yansong Feng, Lizhong Bian, Zheng Wang
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security , 2021. Flagship Journal in Computer Security (CORE A*)

ESI Top 1% Highly Cited Papers . This work was featured on several online media (Sohu, Tencent and China Youth Daily). Preprint Code and dataset

• ICURe Discover Programme (£2.5K)
• Chinese Award for Outstanding Students Abroad ($6K)
• CGO 2025 Distinguished Paper Award
• CGO 2025 Travel Grant
• AI SuperConnector Award (£20K funded by AISC and $25K funded by Google Cloud)
• Mitacs Globalink Research Award ($6K)
• School of Computing's 3.5-Year Full Scholarship (Awarded to Only One International Student in 2021)
• The First-class Scholarship of Northwest University, Top 5% (2018-2019)

• Program Committee Member and Reviewer for CGO 27, KDD 26 and 27, ESWA, Neurocomputing, IEEE TPDS, IEEE TBD, JISA, WWW 26, IST, TOSEM, Science of Computer Programming, AAPG 2025, ICAC 24 and 25, MSN 24 and 25, CSUR, FCS, ICAIHE 26, IoT-Life 26.
• Artifact Evaluation Committee Member: CGO 25, ISSTA 24, CCS 24.

Teaching Assistant

• September 2022 - December 2022, COMP1211 Computer Architecture.
• September 2023 - December 2023, COMP1211 Computer Architecture.

Internship

• May 2025 - Aug 2025, Research Intern, Concordia University. Supervised by Shin Hwei Tan
• July 2020 - December 2020, Research Intern, ALIBABA DAMO ACADEMY. Supervised by Songfang Huang
• 2019 - 2020, Software Engineer (Part Time), Ant Group.

• 2024 - Aug 2026, Research Fellow, School of Computer Science, University of Leeds, U.K.
• 2021 - 2025, Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Leeds, U.K.
• 2018 - 2021, Master, Software Engineering, Northwest University, China.
• 2014 - 2018, Undergraduate, Software Engineering, Chang'an University, China.