Zhaorui Yang

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at University of California, Riverside (UCR), working with Professor Qian Zhang. I am also a graduate student member of the RIPLE Lab. I am passionate about the intersection of AI and software engineering, with a focus on AI4SE/SE4AI. My current work centers on developing advanced testing tools for AI models and applications. The vision of my research is to build vulnerability detection and localization foundations where physical-world AI agents reason about highly structured inputs, program semantics, and reality constraints. My most recent work focues on agentic localization of semantic violations.

Publications

Services

• Committee member, PLDI '26 - Artifact Evaluation
• Committee member, ASPLOS '26 - Artifact Evaluation
• Mentor, UR2PhD Program '25 (Funded by Computing Research Association)
• Subreviewer, SCICO
• External reviewer, ICSME '25
• External reviewer, ISSTA '25
• Committee member, SLE '24 (co-located with SPLASH '24) - Artifact Evaluation Track
• Student volunteer, FSE '24
• Subreviewer, FSE '24 - Artifacts Track
• External reviewer, ISSTA '24 - Research Track
• External reviewer, FSE '24 - Research Track
• External reviewer, ICPADS '23 - Track 1: Algorithms & Architecture

Awards and Grants

• UCR GSA Travel Grant 2025
• UCR GSA Travel Grant 2024
• NSF SMeW at ICSE 2024 Travel Award
• UCR Dean's Distinguished Fellowship

Teaching

• TA of CS 206 at UCR: Advanced Software Testing and Analysis.Winter 2026
• TA of CS 061 at UCR: Machine Organization and Assembly Language Programming.Fall 2025
• TA of CS 010B at UCR: Introduction to Computer Science for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering 2.Fall 2025
• TA of CS 180 at UCR: Introduction to Software Engineering.Summer 2025
• TA of CS 165 at UCR: Computer Security.Winter 2025
• TA of CS 182 at UCR: Software Testing and Verification.Fall 2024
• TA (reader) of CS 260 at UCR: Seminar in Advanced Topics of Software Engineering.Spring 2023