I work to make software development easier and more accessible, so that every programmer can easily write, maintain, and optimise software. 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. I lead the Intelligent Systems Software Lab.

Research interests

• Program optimisation and analysis: Designing new compiler and operating system algorithms to improve application performance and energy efficiency.
  
• Software testing and reliability: Using machine learning and program analysis to detect bugs and improve software robustness. Our recent work has identified 200+ bugs in real-world projects.
  
• Accelerating deep learning models: Collaborating with industrial partners to make the training and deployment of deep learning models more efficient and widely accessible.
  
• Applied machine learning: Applying ML to domains like natural language processing, data mining, and wireless sensing.
  

I maintain a list of must-read research papers on machine learning in compilers.

PhD opportunities

Scholarships may be 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! Before applying, please read this page.

Roles and recognition

I am Professor of Intelligent Software Technology in the Distributed Systems and Services Group at University of Leeds and a Royal Society Industry Fellow. I am a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College, the UKRI Talent Peer Review College, and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. I was previously a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute.
I was named among the Elsevier–Stanford World’s Top 2% Scientists on Single-year (2020–2026) and Career Long list.

I am honoured to have received:

• HiPEAC Technology Transfer Award (2025)
  
• Royal Society Industry Fellowship (2025 - 2029)
  
• Meta Research Award (2023)
  
• Test-of-Time Award (CGO 2024)
  
• Distinguished Paper Award (ACM CGO 2025)
  
• Best Paper Awards (ACM PACT 2010 & 2017, ACM CGO 2017 & 2019)
  
• Best Presentation Awards (PACT 2010, CGO 2013)
  
• HiPEAC Paper Awards (×4)
  
• Best Paper Nominations/Finalist (ACM SC 2024, ACM SenSys 2019, ACM CCS 2018)
  

I am also listed in the unofficial CGO Hall of Fame and have an Erdős Number and a Dijkstra Number of four.

• [Jan, 2025] PROM received a distingusished paper award at CGO 2025
• [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.

For more information, see the group page.

Research Fellows

• Xiaoyang Sun
• Huanting Wang
• Naijia Liu
• Vishal Sharma (KTP Associate)

PhD Students

• Patrick Lenihan, 10 / 2021 - (Funded by School of Computing DTP Scholarship);
• Beite Yang, 10 / 2021 - (co-supervised with Amirul Khan and Peter Jimack);
• Huawei Zhang, 10 / 2023 - (Funded by DTP scholarship);
• Ce Yang, 10 / 2023 -
• Xiao Qin, 10 / 2024 -
• Yucheol Choi (on leave)
• Yassine Marzouk, 10 / 2025 - (Funded by DLA Case studentship)
• Serena Ma, 09 / 2026 -
• Fan Zhang, ¹⁰⁄₂₀₂₆ - (Funded by School of Computer Science studentship; co-advised with Chunwei Xia)
• Tianmin Hu, 04/2026 - (visting PhD student)

Research Assistants and Software Engineers

• Yuhang Wu
• JInyi Fan

Alumni

• Jingzhi Gong 2023-2025 - now Research Associate at KCL
• Huanting Wang, 10 / 2021 - 09 / 2025 - now Research Fellow at University of Leeds
• Ying Wu, 01 / 2021 - 09 / 2025 - now Assistant Professor at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University
• Shenghao Qiu, 10 / 2020 - 09 / 2025 - now Research Fellow in University of York
• Jiayu Zhao, 10 / 2020 - 05 / 2025 - now with Huawei Cambridge Lab
• 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

• HiPEAC Tech Transfer Award 2025
• CGO 2025 Distinguished Paper Award
• CGO 2024 Test-of-Time Award
• Named among Standford World’s Top 2% Scientists 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
• 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: Elsevier Journal of Computer Languages; CCF Transactions on High Performance Computing.
• Program/General (Co-)Chair: CGO 2027; ICAC 2024–2026; COSMIC @ CGO (2019, 2017, 2015, 2013); HiPEAC Thematic Sessions (2013, 2016).
• Track Co-Chair: The ACM Web Conference (WWW) 2026.
• Workshop Co-Chair: MobiSys 2023.
• Artifact Evaluation Chair: PACT 2016.

• Lightning Talk Chair: PLDI 2017.

• Program Committee Member (Area Chair and Senior PC):

  • 2025–2027 and recurring services: SC (2027); ISPASS (2027); IPDPS (2019–2023, 2025–2027); ICML (2027, Area Chair); NeurIPS (2026, Area Chair); KDD (2026–2027, Area Chair); AAAI (2026–2027, Senior PC); IJCAI (2019–2027, Area Chair); PAKDD (2026–2027, Area Chair); EuroMLSys (2022–2026); Euro-Par (2026); LCTES (2021, 2023, 2026); CGO (2020, 2022, 2024–2026); ISCA (2025); PPoPP (2020, 2025); CCGrid (2025); COLING (2018, 2025).
  • 2020–2024: ACM Student Research Competition @ CGO (2024); DAC (2024); ISSTA (2024); AccML (2023–2024); AACL (2020, 2022–2023); ACL (2019, 2023); EMNLP (2021–2022); HIPS (2022); AAAI (2022); MLSH @ PACT (2020); IEEE TPDS Special Section on Parallel and Distributed Computing Techniques for AI, ML and DL (2020); Challenge (2020).
  • Earlier: NPC (2018–2019); Aorta @ ECOOP (2019); ICAC (2018–2019); PACT (2018); ICPADS (2009, 2018); INFOCOMP (2018); ParCo (2015, 2017); CC (2016); ERPP (2015); ML4PL (2015); ICPP-EMS (2015); PASA (2013–2014); ITCS (2011–2012).

• External Review Committee Member: CGO (2015, 2018); PLDI (2014); HPCA (2015); HiPEAC (2011).

Teaching

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

• July 2019 - , Professor, School of Computer Science, 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