I work to make software development easier and more accessible so that every programmer can easily write, maintain and optimise software. I maintain a list of must-read research papers for machine learning in compilers. I am interested in solving real-world problems by building working prototypes to be tested in real-life environments and real computing hardware using realistic workloads. We are a strong believer in reproducibility with a track record of engaging with the artefact evaluation process of major systems conferences. My research interests include:

• Program optimisation and analysis: I am interested in how we can design new algorithms and optimisation techniques at compilers and operating systems to improve application performance and energy efficiency.
• Software testing and software reliability: I use machine learning and code analysis techniques to detect software bugs and to improve software reliability; Our recent work has identified 200+ bugs from real-life projects.
• Accelerate large-scale deep learning models: I work to make the training and use of large-scale deep learning models accessible to every data scientist by collaborating with major industrial players including Meta.
• Applied machine learning: Some of my works apply machine learning to emerging applications areas like natural language processing, data mining and wireless sensing.

PhD students: Scholarships are available for outstanding candidates. Being an advisor to students is the best part of my job. 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! Please read here before applying.

I am a (full) professor and a member of the Distributed Systems and Services Group at Leeds, the EPSRC Peer Review College, the UKRI Talent Peer Review College (PRC), and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. I was a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute. I was named among the Elsevier and Stanford World’s Top 2% Scientists in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. I am a recipient of the Test-of-time Award in CGO 2024, Best Paper Award in ACM PACT 2010 and 2017, ACM CGO 2017 and 2019, Best Presentation Award at PACT 2010 and CGO 2013, 4 HiPEAC paper awards, and Best Paper Nomination/Finalist in ACM SC 2024, ACM SenSys 2019, and ACM CCS 2018. I am in the unofficial CGO hall of fame. I have an Erdős Number and a Dijkstra number of four.

• [Oct, 2024] Congratulations to Xiaoyang and Huanting winning the AI SuperConnector Award; Each is given a £20K seed fund to commercialise their research.
• [March, 2024] Received CGO 2024 Test-of-time Award for my CGO’13 paper; selected as a paper that was published 10 – 12 years prior and has had a lasting impact on the field.
• [September, 2023] New 24-month Innovative UK project awarded (PI) - An RA post will open soon.
• [May, 2023] New EPSRC-funded project (PI) on buidling secure and high-performance memory allocators

Research Fellows

• Xiaoyang Sun
• Jingzhi Gong - KTP Associate with TurinTech
• Huanting Wang

PhD Students

• Jiayu Zhao, 10 / 2020 - (Funded by PhD Scholarship);
• Shenghao Qiu, 10 / 2020 - 12 / 2024 (Funded by industry PhD studentship) - now Research Fellow in University of York;
• Yin Wu, 01 / 2021 -, Funded by PhD studentship (co-supervised with James Jianqiao Yu from University of York);
• Yachao Zhu, 04 / 2021 - (Funded by PhD Scholarship);
• Patrick Lenihan, 10 / 2021 - (Funded by School of Computing DTP Scholarship);
• Huanting Wang, 10 / 2021 - (Funded by PhD Scholarship);
• Beite Yang, 10 / 2021 - (co-supervised with Amirul Khan and Peter Jimack, funded by CFD CDT);
• Yiming Ma, 09 / 2023 - (Funded by PhD scholarship);
• Hua Wei Zhang, 10 / 2023 - (Funded by DTP scholarship);
• Ce Yang, 10 / 2023 -
• Xiao Qin, 10 / 2024 -
• Yucheol Choi, 03 / 2025 -

Research Assistants and Software Engineers

• Yuhang Wu
• JInyi Fan

Alumni

• Chunwei Xia 05 / 2023 - 09 / 2024 - now Lecturer at University of Leeds
• Xiaoyang Sun 10 / 2019 - 11 / 2023 - now Research Fellow at University of Leeds
• Yiming Wang Visiting PhD Student 2023 - 2024
• Rodrigo Caetano Rocha 10 / 2016 - 07 / 2021 - now Senior Researcher at Huawei Edinburgh Lab
• Ben Taylor (PhD Student) - firt job: Transport for the North
• Vicent Sanz Marco (PDRA) - Assistant professor at Osaka University, Japan
• Volker Seeker (PDRA) - now with Meta AI
• Guixin Ye - now associate professor; Best paper award nomination at CCS 2018, ACM China Best PhD Dissertation Award (Shaanxi Province).
• William Ogilvie 09 / 2014 - 01 / 2018 (PhD student, co-supervised with Hugh Leather from the University of Edinburgh) - first job: Amazon; ACM SRC Gold Medal recipient
• Jie Ren (Visiting PhD student, 09 / 2015 - 03 / 2016, visiting scholar, 03/2019 - 03/2020) - Now Associate Professor at ShaanXi Normal University, China

• CGO 2024 Test-of-Time Award
• Named among Standford World’s Top 2% Scientists 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
• Facebook research award, 2021
• Best Paper Award: ACM/IEEE PACT 2010, ACM/IEEE CGO 2017, ACM/IEEE PACT 2017, ACM/IEEE CGO 2019
• Best Paper Nomination: ACM SC 2023, ACM CCS 2018, ACM SenSys 2019
• Best Presentation Award: ACM/IEEE PACT 2010, ACM/IEEE CGO 2013
• HiPEAC Paper Award: ASPLOS 2024, PLDI 2021, PLDI 2020, PLDI 2009 - for “publishing their work at conferences in which Europe is not strongly represented”
• IBM Bravo! Award for outstanding technical contribution to Software Development Toolkit for IBM CELL BroadBand Engine Processor, IBM: 2007

Professional Services

• Guest editor: Elesiver Journal of Computer Languages, CCF Transactions on High Performance Computing
• Program/General Chair: ICAC 2025, ICAC 2024, COSMIC 2019 @ CGO 2019, COSMIC 2017 @ CGO 2017, COSMIC 2015 @ CGO 2015, COSMIC 2013 @ CGO 2013, HiPEAC Thematic Session 2013 and 2016
• Artifact Evaluation Chair: PACT 2016
• Workshop co-chair: Mobisys 23
• Lightning Talk Chair: PLDI 2017
• Program Committee Member: IPDPS 25, 19-23, CGO 25, 24, 22, 20, PPoPP 25, 20, CCGRID 25, COLING 25, 18, IJCAI 19-25 (area chair), ACM Student Research Competition at CGO 24, DAC 24, ISSTA 2024, EuroMLSys 22-24, AccML 24, 23, AACL 23, 22, 20, ACL 23, 19, LCTES 23, 21, EMNLP 22, 21, HIPS 22, AAAI 22, MLSH 20 @ PACT 20, IEEE TPDS Special Section on Parallel and Distributed Computing Techniques for AI, ML and DL 2020, Challenge 20, NPC 19, Aorta @ ECOOP 19, ICAC 19, PACT 18, NPC 18, ICPADS 18, INFOCOMP 18, ICAC 18, ParCo 17, CC 16, ERPP 15, ML4PL 15, ParCo 15, ICPP-EMS 15, PASA 14, PASA 13, ITCS 12, ITCS 11, ICPADS 09
• External Review Committee Member: CGO 2018, CGO 2015, PLDI 2014, HPCA 2015, HiPEAC 2011

Teaching

• XJCO1211 Computer Architecture, 2023-
• XJCO1921 Programming Project, 2021-

• July 2019 - , Professor (Associate Professor prior 2022) School of Computing, University of Leeds
• September 2013 - July 2019, Senior Lecturer (Lecturer prior 2017), School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University.
• 2012 - 2013, Research Associate, the University of Edinbugh.
• 2007 - 2011, PhD Student, the University of Edinburgh. Nominated for BCS Distinguished Dissertation Award;
• 2005 - 2007, Research Staff member, IBM China Research Lab

• {initial}.{lastname}5 [at] {leeds.ac.uk}
• School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
• Please email me for an appointment