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About Us

The Advanced Software Technologies Lab is led by Professor Zhendong Su. We are part of the Institute for Programming Languages and Systems in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. We work in the areas of programming languages and compilers, software engineering, computer security, deep learning and education technologies. Specific research projects that we are actively involved in can be found on our Research page.

Recent Publications

Finding Bugs in Sanitizer Implementations. Shaohua Li, Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of ASPLOS, San Diego, CA, USA, April 27-May 1, 2024. [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]

Comparing Cognitive Load Among Undergraduate Students Programming in Python and the Visual Language Algot. Sverrir Thorgeirsson, Theo Weidmann, Karl-Heinz Weidmann, and Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of SIGCSE, Portland, OR, USA, March 20-23, 2024.

Recursion in Secondary Computer Science Education: A Comparative Study of Visual Programming Approaches. Sverrir Thorgeirsson, Lennart Lais, Theo Weidmann, and Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of SIGCSE, Portland, OR, USA, March 20-23, 2024.

API-driven Program Synthesis for Testing Static Typing Implementations. Thodoris Sotiropoulos, Stefanos Chaliasos, and Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of POPL, London, UK, January 17-19, 2024. [external pageCode]

Automata-based Trace Analysis for Aiding Diagnosing GUI Testing Tools for Android. Enze Ma, Shan Huang, Weigang He, Ting Su, Jue Wang, Huiyu Liu, Geguang Pu, Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of ESEC/FSE 2023, San Francisco, CA, USA, December 3-9, 2023. [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]

Property-based Fuzzing for Finding Data Manipulation Errors in Android Apps. Jingling Sun, Ting Su, Jiayi Jiang, Jue Wang, Geguang Pu, Zhendong Su. In external pageProceedings of ESEC/FSE 2023, December 3-9, 2023. [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]

Accelerating Fuzzing through Prefix-guided Execution. Shaohua Li, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of SPLASH/OOPSLA, October 22-27, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library] [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]
Distinguished Paper Award

Validating JIT Compilers via Compilation Space Exploration. Cong Li, Yanyan Jiang, Chang Xu, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of SOSP, Koblenz, Germany, October 23-26, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]
Best Paper Award

Precise and Generalized Robustness Certification for Neural Networks. Yuanyuan Yuan, Shuai Wang, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of USENIX Security 2023, August 9-11, 2023. [external pagearXiv] [external pageUSENIX]

DynSQL: Stateful Fuzzing for Database Management Systems with Complex and Valid SQL Query Generation. Zu-Ming Jiang, Jia-Ju Bai, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of USENIX Security 2023, August 9-11, 2023. [external pageUSENIX]

An Empirical Study of Functional Bugs in Android Apps. Yiheng Xiong, Mengqian Xu, Ting Su, Jingling Sun, Jue Wang, He Wen, Geguang Pu, Jifeng He, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of ISSTA 2023, July 17-21, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]
Distinguished Paper Award

Detecting Transactional Bugs in Database Engines via Graph-Based Oracle Construction. Zu-Ming Jiang, Si Liu, Manuel Rigger, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of OSDI, July 10-12, 2023. [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]

Testing Graph Database Engines via Query Partitioning. Matteo Kamm, Manuel Rigger, Chengyu Zhang, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of ISSTA 2023, July 17-21, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]

Finding Unstable Code via Compiler-driven Differential Testing. Shaohua Li, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of ASPLOS, March 25-29, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]

Characterizing and Finding System Setting-Related Defects in Android Apps. Jingling Sun, Ting Su, Kai Liu, Chao Peng, Zhao Zhang, Geguang Pu, Tao Xie, Zhendong Su. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), March 2023. [external pageIEEE Xplore]

Coverage-directed Differential Testing of X.509 Certificate Validation in SSL/TLS Implementations. Pengbo Nie, Chengcheng Wan, Jiayu Zhu, Ziyi Lin, Yuting Chen, and Zhendong Su. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. January 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]

To our publications

Projects and Code

external pageDBMS Testing:
400+ bugs in widely-used DBMS
(SQLite, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, and TiDB)

external pageProject Yin-Yang for SMT Solver Testing:
[Z3/CVC4 bugs: 1,560 (total) / 1,061 (fixed)]

EMI & SPE Compiler Testing:
[GCC/LLVM bugs: 1,634 (total) / 1,076 (fixed)]

Algot: a visual, graph-based programming language developed in our group.

You can find a more comprehensive list of our projects and code on our Research Pages

News

We were at CGO 2024 in Ediburgh and won a couple awards at the Student Research Competition (SRC). Congratulations to our students Michel Weber and Dalia Shaaban on their awards! external pageRead more on the SRC awards at CGO

Congratulations to Cong Li, Zhendong Su and co-authors on their Best Paper Award at SOSP 2023!

Congratulations to Shaohua Li and Zhendong Su on their Distinguished Paper Award at SPLASH/OOPSLA 2023!

Accelerating Fuzzing through Prefix-Guided Execution, Shaohua Li, Zhendong Su, In external pageProceedings of SPLASH/OOPSLA, October 22-27, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library] [external pagePDF] [external pageCode]

2023 ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award at OOPSLA’23 [external pageLink]

Following your heart

Dr Chengyu Zhang has been a postdoc in the Advanced Software Technologies (AST) Lab of Professor Zhendong Su since the beginning of 2022. He joined the group after completing his doctorate at the East China Normal University (ECNU) in 2021. He had come to ETH Zurich before, as a visiting doctoral student in Professor Su’s group in 2018 and 2019.

24.07.2023

Congratulations to Yiheng Xiong, Ting Su, Jue Wang, Zhendong Su and co-authors on their recent Distinguished Paper Award at external pageISSTA 2023!

An Empirical Study of Functional Bugs in Android Apps. Yiheng Xiong, Mengqian Xu, Ting Su, Jingling Sun, Jue Wang, He Wen, Geguang Pu, Jifeng He, Zhendong Su. In Proceedings of external pageISSTA 2023, July 17-21, 2023. [external pageACM Digital Library]

Torsten Hoefler, Marc Pollefeys and Zhendong Su named ACM Fellows

Torsten Hoefler, Marc Pollefeys and Zhendong Su, professors at the Department of Computer Science, have been named ACM Fellows. The distinction recognises the extensive research contributions in their respective fields. Congratulations!

18.01.2023

Srdjan Capkun and Zhendong Su named IEEE Fellows

Srdjan Capkun and Zhendong Su, professors at the Department of Computer Science, have been named IEEE Fellows. The prestigious grade of IEEE Fellow is conferred upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.

12.12.2022

Meta Security Research Award for Zhendong Su and Shaohua Li

Professor Zhendong Su and his doctoral student Shaohua Li have been awarded a 2022 Meta Security Research Award for their project proposal on “Solidifying sanitizer implementations via automated testing”. Congratulations!

22.09.2022

A complete list of our News & Events

Bachelor and Master Thesis

Our group has a wide range of possible topics for bachelor's and master's theses at ETH. We are broadly interested in programming languages and compilers, software engineering, computer security, deep learning and education technologies. To get an idea of our recent research activities, interested students are encouraged take a look at our publications and our various projects, such as the EMI compiler testing, the external pageSQLancer project, external pageProject Yin-Yang and Algot.

Under these research areas, we have possible thesis topics ranging from software/system building, empirical investigations, to algorithmic and theoretical explorations.

Interested students should follow our application procedure here.