Yifan Xiong

Computer Science · UIUC

Yifan Xiong

Ph.D. student in Computer Science

Yifan Xiong

I am Yifan Xiong, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UIUC, advised by Prof. Yiling Lou. I received my B.Eng. degree from Nanjing University, where I was fortunate to work with Prof. Lei Bu and Prof. Minxue Pan. I also had the opportunity to work with Prof. Lingming Zhang during Summer 2024.

My research interests lie broadly in Software Engineering, including Software Testing, Program Analysis, and Formal / Runtime Verification. I am particularly excited about how these foundations interact with modern LLMs and advanced Software Engineering Agents.

News

  • Jun. 2025HAFuzz was accepted to ICSE 2026.

Selected publications

All publications

  1. Preprint · 2026

    Complex Agents, Shallow Tests: Demystifying and Enhancing Test Adequacy of Agent Harness in the Wild

    Yifan Xiong, Jingyi Ge, Zhenpeng Chen, Yiling Lou

    Paper

  2. ICSE 2026

    Temporal Specification Oriented Fuzzing for Trigger-Action-Programming Smart Home Integrations

    Jinglin Dai†, Yifan Xiong†, Lezhi Ma, Shangqing Liu, Lei Bu

    The 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026), Research Track

    PaperWebsite

  3. Preprint · 2024

    Demystifying and Assessing Code Understandability in Java Decompilation

    Ruixin Qin†, Yifan Xiong†, Yifei Lu, Minxue Pan

    Paper

† Equal contribution.

Education & experience

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science (in progress)

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

    Sep. 2026 — present

  • Aug. — Dec. 2025

  • B.Eng. in Software Engineering

    Nanjing University

    Sep. 2021 — Jul. 2025

Teaching