Yanju Chen

I've recently earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at University of California, Santa Barbara, advised by Prof. Yu Feng. Previously, I studied in Computer Science at Sun Yat-sen University, advised by Prof. Rong Pan.

Making programming more efficient and accessible for users of all levels is my long-term pursuit. I am a researcher working on programming languages, software engineering and security. I develop tools that automate programming tasks, verify system behaviour, detect and fix bugs. I am broadly interested in program synthesis and verification for blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs and complex software systems.

| Projects | Publications | Talks | Service | Experience | Teaching | Awards | Misc.

Open-Source Projects

Trinity-Edge An Extensible Synthesis Framework for Data Science
Hecate Tree Traversal Synthesis Using Domain-Specific Symbolic Compilation
Picus Automated Bug Finding for Zero-Knowledge Proof Circuits
Poe Program Synthesis for Visualization Question Answering
ZKap Practical Security Analysis of Zero-Knowledge Proof Circuits
Pomelo Symbolic Reasoning Toolkit for Bitcoin Script

Publications & Manuscripts
(* Equal Contribution)


ASE'24 Refinement Types for Visualization
Jingtao Xia, Junrui Liu, Nicholas Brown, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf]

CCS'24 Foray: Towards Effective Attack Synthesis against Deep Logical Vulnerabilities in DeFi Protocols
Hongbo Wen, Hanzhi Liu, Jiaxin Song, Yanju Chen, Wenbo Guo, Yu Feng

Dissertation Deduction-Powered Neural Program Synthesis: A Synergistic Perspective
Yanju Chen
[bib] [pdf]

USENIX Practical Security Analysis of Zero-Knowledge Proof Circuits
Security'24 Hongbo Wen, Jon Stephens, Yanju Chen, Kostas Ferles, Shankara Pailoor, Kyle Charbonnet, Isil Dillig, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf] [artifact-zkap]

ASE'23 Fast and Reliable Program Synthesis via User Interaction
Yanju Chen, Chenglong Wang, Xinyu Wang, Osbert Bastani, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf] [slides]

PLDI'23 Automated Detection of Under-constrained Circuits in Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Shankara Pailoor*, Yanju Chen*, Franklyn Wang, Clara Rodríguez, Jacob Van Geffen, Jason Morton, Michael Chu, Brian Gu, Yu Feng, Isil Dillig
[bib] [pdf] [slides] [artifact-Picus]

PLDI'23 Conflict-Driven Synthesis for Layout Engines
Junrui Liu, Yanju Chen, Eric Atkinson, Yu Feng, Rastislav Bodik
[bib] [pdf]

ASE'22 Learning Contract Invariants Using Reinforcement Learning
Junrui Liu*, Yanju Chen*, Bryan Tan, Isil Dillig, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf]

OOPSLA'22 Synthesis-Powered Optimization of Smart Contracts via Data Type Refactoring
Yanju Chen*, Yuepeng Wang*, Maruth Goyal, James Dong, Yu Feng, Isil Dillig
[bib] [pdf] [slides]

OOPSLA'22 Automated Transpilation of Imperative to Functional Code Using Neural-Guided Program Synthesis
Benjamin Mariano, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng, Greg Durrett, Isil Dillig
[bib] [pdf]

PLDI'22 Visualization Question Answering Using Introspective Program Synthesis
Yanju Chen, Xifeng Yan, Yu Feng
ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award
[bib] [pdf] [slides] [artifact-Poe]

ASPLOS'22 Tree Traversal Synthesis Using Domain-Specific Symbolic Compilation
Yanju Chen, Junrui Liu, Yu Feng, Rastislav Bodik
[bib] [pdf] [slides] [artifact-Hecate]

S&P'22 Sailfish: Vetting Smart Contract State-Inconsistency Bugs in Seconds
Priyanka Bose, Dipanjan Das, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna
[bib] [pdf] [slides] [artifact-Sailfish]

ASE'20 Demystifying Loops in Smart Contracts
Benjamin Mariano, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng, Shuvendu Lahiri, Isil Dillig
[bib] [pdf]

CAV'20 Program Synthesis Using Deduction-Guided Reinforcement Learning
Yanju Chen, Chenglong Wang, Osbert Bastani, Isil Dillig, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf] [slides]

FSE'19 Maximal Multi-Layer Specification Synthesis
Yanju Chen, Ruben Martins, Yu Feng
[bib] [pdf] [slides]

VLDB'19 Trinity: An Extensible Synthesis Framework for Data Science
Ruben Martins, Jia Chen, Yanju Chen, Yu Feng, Isil Dillig
[bib] [pdf] [poster] [artifact-Trinity] [artifact-Trinity-Edge]

AAAI'17 Automatic Emphatic Information Extraction from Aligned Acoustic Data and Its Application on Sentence Compression
Yanju Chen, Rong Pan
[bib] [pdf] [slides]

Recent Talks
(Slides of conference talks can be found with publications.)

ZKSwift: A Programming Language for High-Performance ZK Circuits
11/2023 Invited Talk, ProgCrypto @ DevConnect Istanbul, Turkey

Program Synthesis for All: A Synergistic Perspective
04/2023 Purdue CS Research Seminar Purdue University, IN, USA
02/2023 Berkeley Programming Systems Seminar University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
02/2023 Stanford Software Research Seminar Stanford University, CA, USA
01/2023 UCSB Graduate Research Seminar University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Synthesis-Powered Optimization of Smart Contracts via Data Type Refactoring
12/2022 OOPSLA'22 Auckland, New Zealand

Formal Verification for Zero-Knowledge Circuits
07/2022 0xPARC Summer Residency New York City, NY, USA

Visualization Question Answering Using Introspective Program Synthesis
06/2022 PLDI'22 San Diego, CA, USA

Program Synthesis for Complex Software Systems
05/2022 PhD Proposal Talk University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Attack Synthesis for Blockchain Security
04/2022 Guest Lecture, CS292C (Computer-Aided Reasoning for Software) University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

A Symbolic Virtual Machine for Automated R1CS Verification
04/2022 0xPARC ZK Learning Group #2 New York City, NY, USA

Tree Traversal Synthesis Using Domain-Specific Symbolic Compilation
04/2022 ASPLOS'22 Lausanne, Switzerland

Multi-Modal Program Synthesis
04/2021 Guest Lecture, CS190I (Program Synthesis) University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Bridging Logical Reasoning and Machine Learning in Program Synthesis
12/2020 PhD Major Area Examination Talk University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Program Synthesis Using Deduction-Guided Reinforcement Learning
07/2020 CAV'20 Los Angeles, CA, USA

Deep Learning in Open-Domain Dialogue Systems
05/2018 Guest Lecture, CS291K (Deep Learning) University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Service

2025 Program Committee
USENIX Security 2025, OOPSLA 2025
2024 Artifact Evaluation Committee
VMCAI 2024, ECOOP 2024, PLDI 2024, CCS 2024
2024 Extended Review Committee
ECOOP 2024
2024 Program Committee
Automates@IJCAI 2024
2024 Reviewer
ACM TACO
2023 Program Committee
SPLASH 2023 SRC, Automates@IJCAI 2023
2023 Artifact Evaluation Committee
PLDI 2023, ECOOP 2023, VMCAI 2023
2023 Reviewer
ACM TACO, ACM TOSEM
2023 Extended Review Committee
ECOOP 2023
Earlier Artifact Evaluation Committee
PLDI 2022, PLDI 2021, OOPSLA 2020
Earlier Student Volunteer
POPL 2020, AAAI 2017

Experience

07/2022 - 04/2024 Veridise Inc.
Chief Research Scientist
09/2019 - 10/2019 University of Washington
Visiting Researcher (Mentor: Prof. Rastislav Bodik)
06/2019 - 09/2019 The University of Texas at Austin
Visiting Researcher (Mentor: Prof. Isil Dillig)
07/2015 - 06/2017 iPIN Inc.
Research Intern (Mentor: Prof. Rong Pan)

Teaching

Teaching Assistantships, University of California, Santa Barbara

Fall'17 CS 40: Foundations of Computer Science
Spring'18 CS 16: Problem Solving with Computers - I
Summer'18 CS 8: Introduction to Computer Science
Fall'18 CS 165A: Artificial Intelligence
Winter'19 CS 4: Computer Science Bootcamp
Spring'19 CS 130A: Data Structures and Algorithms I
Winter'20 CS 162: Programming Languages
Winter'21 CS 595N: Research Seminar
Spring'21 CS 190I: Program Synthesis
Winter'22 CS 595N: Research Seminar
Spring'24 CS 190J: Blockchain Technologies and Security

Honors and Awards

2023 Ethereum Foundation Academic Award
2023 UCSB Computer Science Outstanding PhD Student of the Year
2022 ACM SIGPLAN PAC Award - OOPSLA
2022 ACM SIGPLAN PLDI Distinguished Paper Award
2022 ACM SIGPLAN PAC Award - PLDI
2017 AAAI Student Scholarship

Misc.
"Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels."
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
misc Easy Sip Series
― Talks on Web Technologies and Designs at SYSU Cisco Team
Javascript Overlook | Chrome Extension Foundations
Web Crawler Solutions | Graphic Design Principles

Web Arts Series
― Talks on Web Design at SYSU MSTC
Fireworks | HTML | CSS | Web Illusions

Maxent Models: Foundations
A Technical Talk at iPIN. 2015-11-27

misc

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
Michael Cunningham, The Hours

© 2024 Yanju Chen. Page inspired by Barron.