Zheng Wang

I am (full) Professor of Intelligent Software Technology at the School of Computing at the University of Leeds.

My research agenda is 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.

My research interests include:

• Accelerate large-scale deep learning models: I work to make the training and use of large-scale deep learning models (with billions or trillions of parameters) accessible to every data scientist and organisation by collaborating with major industrial players including Meta.
• Program optimisation: 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, with the ultimate goal of massively reducing the software development cost; I often use machine learning (including deep learning) as a design methodology.
• Software security: I am currently investigating the use of machine learning and code analysis techniques to detect software bugs and vulnerabilities; Our recent work has identified 200+ bugs and 50+ CVE from real-life projects.
• Applied machine learning: Some of my works apply machine learning to emerging applications areas like natural language processing, data mining and wireless sensing; This is conducted as a part of research hobbies by working with collaborators in mobile systems, AI and NLP.

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 Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, 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 am a recipient of the Best Paper Award in ACM PACT 2010 and 2017, ACM CGO 2017 and 2019, Best Presentation Award at PACT 2010 and CGO 2013, 3 HiPEAC paper awards, and Best Paper Nomination/Finalist in ACM CCS 2018 and ACM SenSys 2019. I am in the unofficial CGO hall of fame.

• [May, 2023] New EPSRC-funded project (PI) on buidling secure and high-performance memory allocators (with a PDRA post opening soon).
• [July, 2022] Awarded a project (PI) on transformative compiler technology
• [Jun, 2022] Two papers accepted by SC 2022 (CCF Rank-A conference)
• [Oct, 2021] Received Facebook gift award for research on GPU optimisation.
• [July, 2021] We are hiring a research fellow in compiler optimisaiton! Apply through here.

PhD Students

• Xiaoyang Sun, 09 / 2019 - 09 / 2023, (Funded by industry PhD studentship, co-supervised with Jie Xu);
• Jiayu Zhao, 10 / 2020 - (Funded by Industrial PhD Scholarship);
• Shenghao Qiu, 10 / 2020 - (Funded by industry PhD studentship);
• Haibo Wang, 10 / 2020 -, Funded by Leeds-SUSTech Joint PhD program (co-supervised with Shin Hwei Tan from SUSTech).
• Yin Wu, 01 / 2021 -, Funded by Leeds-SUSTech Joint PhD program (co-supervised with James Jianqiao Yu from SUSTech);
• Yachao Zhu, 04 / 2021 - (Funded by School of Computing Scholarship);
• Patrick Lenihan, 10 / 2021 - (Funded by School of Computing DTP Scholarship);
• Huanting Wang, 10 / 2021 - (Funded by School of Computing Scholarship);
• Beite Yang, 10 / 2021 - (co-supervised with Amirul Khan and Peter Jimack, funded by CFD CDT);
• Yiming Ma, 09 / 2023 - (Funded by industry PhD scholarship);
• HWei Zhang, 10 / 2023 - (Funded by EPSRC DTP scholarship);
• Ce Yang, 10 / 2023 -

PDRA

• Chunwei Xia

Alumni

• Rodrigo Caetano Rocha 10 / 2016 - 0/2021, (PhD student, co-supervised with Hugh Leather and Murray Cole from the University of Edinburgh) - now Research Fellow at University of Edinburgh
• 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 University of Edinburgh
• Guixin Ye - now associate professor at Northwest University; Best paper award nomination at CCS 2018, ACM China Best PhD Dissertation Award (Shaanxi Province).
• Jie Zhang (co-supervised PhD student) - now assistant professor at Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications
• Shuangjiao Zhai, 09/2019 -2022, now assistant professor at Zhongbei University;
• 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

• 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 CCS 2018, ACM SenSys 2019
• Best Presentation Award: ACM/IEEE PACT 2010, ACM/IEEE CGO 2013
• HiPEAC Paper Award: 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

• 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 CCS 2018, ACM SenSys 2019
• Best Presentation Award: ACM/IEEE PACT 2010, ACM/IEEE CGO 2013
• HiPEAC Paper Award: 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

Google Scholar | DBLP

[SC '22] STRONGHOLD: Fast and Affordable Billion-scale Deep Learning Model Training
Xiaoyang Sun, Wei Wang, Shenghao Qiu, Renyu Yang, Songfang Huang, Jie Xu, Zheng Wang
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2022) (CCF Rank-A conference, Artificate Evaluated!) , 2022.

Preprint Code Dataset

[SC '22] Towards Scalable Supercomputing Resource Management
Yiqin Dai, Yong Dong, Kai Lu, Ruibo Wang, Wei Zhang, Juan Chen, Mingtian Shao, Zheng Wang
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2022) (CCF Rank-A conference) , 2022.

Preprint Code

[CC '22] Automating Reinforcement Learning Architecture Design for Code Optimization
Huanting Wang, Zhanyong Tang, Cheng Zhang, Jiaqi Zhao, Chris Cummins, Hugh Leather, Zheng Wang
The 31th ACM SIGPLAN 2020 International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC 2022) (Artificate Evaluated!) , 2022.

Preprint Code Dataset

[SC '21] LibShalom: Optimizing Small and Irregular-shaped Matrix Multiplications on ARMv8 Multi-Cores
Weiling Wang, Jianbin Fang, Dezun Dong, Zheng Wang
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2021) (CCF Rank-A conference) , 2021.

Preprint Code Dataset

Teaching

• XJCO1921 Programming Project, 2021-
• COMP1211 Computer Architecture, 2019-

Professional Services

• Guest editor: Elesiver Journal of Computer Languages, CCF Transactions on High Performance Computing
• Program/General Chair: 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: CGO ’24, AACL ‘23, LCTES ‘23, ACL ‘23, EuroMLSys ‘23, AccML ‘23, IPDPS ’23, EMNLP ‘22, AACL ‘22, HIPS ‘22, EuroMLSys ‘22, AAAI ‘22, IJCAI ‘22 (senior PC), IPDPS ‘22, CGO ‘22, EMNLP ‘21, LCTES ‘21, IPDPS ‘21, IJCAI ‘21 (senior PC), The first International Conference on Code Quality (ICCQ 2021), MLSH ‘20 @ PACT ‘20, IEEE TPDS Special Section on Parallel and Distributed Computing Techniques for AI, ML and DL 2020, AACL ‘20, IPDPS ‘20, CGO ‘20, PPoPP ‘20, Challenge ‘20, NPC ‘19, Aorta @ ECOOP ‘19, ACL ‘19, IJCAI ‘19, IPDPS ‘19, ICAC ‘19, PACT ‘18, NPC ‘18, ICPADS ‘18, COLING ‘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

• May 2022 - , Professor School of Computing, University of Leeds
• July 2019 - April 2022, Associate Professor, School of Computing, University of Leeds
• August 2018 - July 2019, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University.
• Sept 2013 - July, 2018, Lecturer, 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}
• zwanghk
• School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
• Please email me for an appointment