Kaixuan Li

Kaixuan Li

Kaixuan Li (The “X” in “Kaixuan” is pronounced like the “sh” in “shear”) is a postdoctoral research fellow at Nanyang Technological University, working with Prof. Yang Liu. He got his Ph.D. degree from the Software Engineering Institute at East China Normal University (ECNU), under the supervision of Prof. Yixiang Chen. Before that, he received a B.S. degree in Software Engineering from ECNU in 2020.

His research focuses on Software Quality Analysis and Assurance, particularly in exploring program analysis and applying large language models (LLMs) to enhance software security.

💬 kaixuan.li AT ntu.edu.sg

🔥 News

  • 2026.02: I was selected as an ICSE 2027 PC member within the research track. Welcome to submit your papers.
  • 2026.01: I was awarded the “Young Outstanding Paper Award” by the Shanghai Association of Artificial Intelligence (SAAI).
  • 2025.12: Two papers for Neuro-Symbolic vulnerability detection were accepted to FSE 2026 and TSE, respectively.
  • 2025.11: My Ph.D. thesis was awarded “The distinguished Ph.D. thesis” at ECNU.

🔍 Curated Literature Resources

Recently, I have been maintaining three curated, community-maintained literature repositories:

The goal is to provide a structured, continuously updated overview of the fields and to reduce repeated literature collection efforts. Contributions, corrections, and suggestions are very welcome.

📝 Selected Publications

^: co-first author *: corresponding author.

  • A Systematic Study on Generating Web Vulnerability Proof-of-Concepts Using Large Language Models
  • Real-World Usability of Vulnerability Proof-of-Concepts: A Comprehensive Study
  • GadgetHunter: Region-Based Neuro-Symbolic Detection of Java Deserialization Vulnerabilities
    • Kaixuan Li, Jian Zhang, Chong Wang, Sen Chen, Zong Cao, Min Zhang, and Yang Liu
    • ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2026 (to appear)
  • DeepFWI: Identifying Bug-Sensitive Warnings with Multi-Modal Code-Warning Semantics
    • Han Liu, Jian Zhang, Cen Zhang, Xiaohan Zhang, Kaixuan Li, Sen Chen, Shang-Wei Lin, Yixiang Chen, Xinghua Li, and Yang Liu
    • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 2025 (to appear)
  • Minimizing Breaking Changes and Redundancy in Mitigating Technical Lag for Java Projects
  • Learning from the Past: Real-World Exploit Migration for Smart Contract PoC Generation
    • Kairan Sun, Zhengzi Xu, Kaixuan Li, Lyuye Zhang, Yebo Feng, Daoyuan Wu, and Yang Liu
    • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2025
    • Preprint
  • FaultSeeker: LLM-Empowered Framework for Blockchain Transaction Fault Localization
    • Kairan Sun, Zhengzi Xu, Kaixuan Li, Lyuye Zhang, Yuqiang Sun, Liwei Tan, and Yang Liu
    • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2025 (to appear)
  • Acfix: Guiding LLMs with Mined Common RBAC Practices for Context-Aware Repair of Access Control Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts
  • Fixing Outside the Box: Uncovering Tactics for Open-Source Security Issue Management
    • Lyuye Zhang, Jiahui Wu, Chengwei Liu, Kaixuan Li, Xiaoyu Sun, Lida Zhao, Chong Wang, and Yang Liu
    • ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2025
    • https://doi.org/10.1145/3728977
  • A Comprehensive Study on Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Android
  • PatchFinder: A Two-Phase Approach to Security Patch Tracing for Disclosed Vulnerabilities in Open-Source Software
  • Hybrid Artificial Intelligence: Logic Reasoning for Large Language Models (混成式人工智能：面向大语言模型的逻辑推理)
  • Using My Functions Should Follow My Checks: Understanding and Detecting Insecure OpenZeppelin Code in Smart Contracts
  • Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Smart Contracts: How Far Are We?
  • Demystifying the Composition and Code Reuse in Solidity Smart Contracts
    • Kairan Sun, Zhengzi Xu, Chengwei Liu, Kaixuan Li, and Yang Liu
    • ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2023
    • https://doi.org/10.1145/3611643.3616270
  • Comparison and Evaluation on Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Java
    • Kaixuan Li^, Sen Chen^, Lingling Fan, Ruitao Feng, Han Liu, Chengwei Liu, Yang Liu, and Yixiang Chen
    • ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2023
    • https://doi.org/10.1145/3611643.3616262
  • A Comprehensive Study on Quality Assurance Tools for Java
    • Han Liu, Sen Chen, Ruitao Feng, Chengwei Liu, Kaixuan Li, Zhengzi Xu, Liming Nie, Yang Liu, and Yixiang Chen
    • ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2023
    • https://doi.org/10.1145/3597926.3598056
  • Survey on Trustworthiness Measurement for Artificial Intelligence Systems

📖 Education

  • 2020.09 - 2025.06, Ph.D. in Software Engineering, Software Engineering Institute, East China Normal University.
  • 2022.09 - 2023.09, Visiting Ph.D. student, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University.
  • 2016.09 - 2020.06, Bachelor in Software Engineering, Software Engineering Institute, East China Normal University.

💻 Teaching

Teaching Assistant

  • Hardware-Software Co-design (软硬件协同设计)
    • Post-graduate course, East China Normal University, 2021.09-2022.01
  • Optimization and design of intelligent systems (智能系统优化设计)
    • Undergraduate course, East China Normal University, 2021.02-2021.06

📚 Academic Services

Program Committee Member

2026

Journal Reviewer

Junior Program Committee Member

🎖 Honors and Awards

  • Shanghai Association of Artificial Intelligence (SAAI) Young Outstanding Paper Award（上海市人工智能学会青年科技论文奖）, 2026.
  • The distinguished Ph.D. thesis at East China Normal University, 2025.
  • The distinguished Ph.D. thesis at the College of Information Technology, East China Normal University, 2025.
  • Outstanding Graduate of Shanghai, 2025.
  • “Outstanding Student Youth” Award （学生杰出青年）@SEI, East China Normal University, 2025.
  • The President Scholarship of East China Normal University (Graduate), 2024.
  • Merit Student of East China Normal University, 2023-2024.
  • National Scholarship, Ministry of Education, China, 2024.
  • ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper award, FSE 2024, 2024.
  • “Student Technological Excellence” Award (学生科技英才) @SEI, East China Normal University, 2024.
  • Visiting Ph.D. Student Scholarship of China Scholarship Council, 2022-2023.
  • Merit Student of East China Normal University, 2022-2023.
  • Merit Student of East China Normal University, 2021-2022.
  • Merit Student of East China Normal University, 2020-2021.
  • “HUAWEI CUP” The 18th China Post-Graduate Mathematical Contest in Modelling 3rd Prize, 2021.
  • “HUAWEI CUP” The 17th China Post-Graduate Mathematical Contest in Modelling 3rd Prize, 2020.
  • Outstanding Graduate of Shanghai, 2020.