Chengyu Zhang is a Lecturer (equivalent to an Assistant Professor in the US) in the Department of Computer Science at Loughborough University. His research spans software engineering, programming languages, and formal methods, with a focus on providing advanced testing and verification solutions to ensure the reliability of modern software.

His research has uncovered over 2,000 bugs in real-world software systems and has resulted in more than 15 papers in top-tier venues, such as ICSE, PLDI, and SIGMOD. He regularly served as a program committee member for software engineering conferences, such as ICSE, FSE, ASE, and ISSTA, and a reviewer for TOSEM, TSE, TOPLAS, TKDE, and CSUR. His work has been recognised by a PLDI Distinguished Paper Award and a Google Open Source Peer Bonus, and supported by an Amazon Research Award.

Project Yin-Yang for SMT Solver Testing: [Z3/CVC4 bugs: 1,667 (total) / 1,244 (fixed)]
[Reports: YinYang, OpFuzz, TypeFuzz]

The call for a fully funded PhD position (starting Fall 2026) is now open. Feel free to contact me for an informal chat before submitting your application. The deadline is 19 April 2026.

I am looking for Ph.D. and visiting students, with support available through university studentship (two positions for Fall 2026), CSC scholarships (two positions for Fall 2026), or self-funding (anytime). If you are passionate about research and interested in working with me, please feel free to send me an email. I will be happy to chat with you.

Before being a faculty, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at ETH Zurich (2022–2025), where he worked with Prof. Zhendong Su. He received both his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees with honors from East China Normal University (ECNU) (2012–2021), under the supervision of Prof. Geguang Pu. During his doctoral studies, he was also a visiting student at ETH Zurich (2018–2019). Earlier in his career, he co-founded Shanghai Neoclub Information Technology Co., Ltd. (2015–2016).