Xinyu Wang

Xinyu Wang
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Email: xwangsd@umich.edu
Office: 4620 Beyster
Twitter: @xwangsd

[Research] [Teaching] [Publications] [Students] [Service] [CV]

What's new?!

PhD positions available for Fall 2024. Application deadline is Dec. 15. 2023. Email me if you are interested!

Prospectives students: take a look at this link.

I am a tenure-track assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan.
My research interests are generally in the areas of programming languages, formal methods, software engineering, and artificial intelligence.
Previously I was a researcher at Microsoft. I obtained my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Research

It's pretty clear that code generation (also known as program synthesis) will become a fundamental capability in future computing.
My work aims to contribute to this vision, by developing program synthesis techniques that are scalable, efficient, reliable, interactive, usable, interpretable, robust, etc.

The particular approach I've been taking to realize this vision is largely problem-driven, by synergistically combining (1) insights from the problem domain and (2) techniques from the areas of formal methods, programming languages, as well as machine learning (including LLMs) and human-centered computing.
The goal is that, by better solving hard problems from important domains, we can also develop new insights around code generation that can generalize to and benefit other domains.

Here are some projects that we have been working on lately...

Database query optimization
Publications: SlabCity (VLDB 2023)
TL;DR: We've been developing synthesis-aided query rewriting techniques that can optimize a significant larger class of database queries, including complex analytical queries. This also requires designing more powerful verification and testing techniques that can better reason about queries, especially those complex ones. The goal is to eventually develop rewriters that produce faster queries in a provably sound way.

Process Automation
Publications: DiLogics (UIST 2023), MIWA (UIST 2023), WebRobot (PLDI 2022), SemanticOn (UIST 2022), WebQA (PLDI 2021)
TL;DR: We've been developing new programming-by-demonstration algorithms and interaction mechanisms that enable non-experts to easily "write" web automation programs (e.g., to automate tasks like data scraping, data entry, etc.) by simply showing how to perform the task in a web browser. The goal is to eventually enable automation of tasks that involve interactions across applications, without manual coding.

End-user programming
Publications: Faery (AST 2023), NL2Viz (FSE 2022), INTENT (UIST 2022), Regae (UIST 2020), Regel (PLDI 2020), Relish (OOPSLA 2018), Blaze (POPL 2018), Dace (OOPSLA 2017), FIDEX (OOPSLA 2016)
TL;DR: We've been developing programming-by-example frameworks that are generally applicable to various end-user programming tasks (such as regular-expression authoring, data wrangling, data visualization), as well as their interfaces, such that non-programmers can "program without coding" by simply providing high-level specifications in different modalities (such as input-output examples, natural-language descriptions).

Teaching

EECS 598. Intelligent Programming Systems [Fall 2023]

EECS 498. Intelligent Programming Systems [Fall 2023]

EECS 481. Software Engineering [Winter 2023]

EECS 481. Software Engineering [Fall 2022]

EECS 481. Software Engineering [Winter 2022]

EECS 598. Intelligent Programming Systems [Fall 2021]

EECS 498. Intelligent Programming Systems [Fall 2021]

EECS 203. Discrete Mathematics [Winter 2021]

EECS 598. Program Synthesis: Techniques and Applications [Fall 2020]

Publications

SlabCity: Whole-Query Optimization using Program Synthesis [pdf] Rui Dong, Jie Liu, Yuxuan Zhu, Cong Yan, Barzan Mozafari, Xinyu Wang Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (VLDB), 2023
MIWA: Mixed-Initiative Web Automation for Better User Control and Confidence [pdf] Weihao Chen, Xiaoyu Liu, Jiacheng Zhang, Ian Iong Lam, Zhicheng Huang, Rui Dong, Xinyu Wang, Tianyi Zhang Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2023
DiLogics: Creating Web Automation Programs with Diverse Logics [pdf][demo] Kevin Pu, Jim Yang, Angel Yuan, Minyi Ma, Rui Dong, Xinyu Wang, Yan Chen, Tovi Grossman Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2023
Fast and Reliable Program Synthesis via User Interaction [pdf] Yanju Chen, Chenglong Wang, Xinyu Wang, Osbert Bastani, Yu Feng IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2023
WebRobot: Web Robotic Process Automation using Interactive Programming-by-Demonstration [pdf] Rui Dong, Zhicheng Huang, Ian Iong Lam, Yan Chen, Xinyu Wang Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2022
SemanticOn: Specifying Content-Based Semantic Conditions for Web Automation Programs [pdf][demo] Kevin Pu, Rainey Fu, Rui Dong, Xinyu Wang, Yan Chen, Tovi Grossman Best Paper Honorable Mention Award Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2022
INTENT: Interactive Tensor Transformation Synthesis [pdf] [code] Zhanhui Zhou, Man To Tang, Qiping Pan, Shangyin Tan, Xinyu Wang, Tianyi Zhang Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2022
NL2Viz: Natural Language to Visualization via Constrained Syntax-Guided Synthesis [pdf] Zhengkai Wu, Vu Le, Ashish Tiwari, Sumit Gulwani, Arjun Radhakrishna, Ivan Radicek, Gustavo Soares, Xinyu Wang, Zhenwen Li, Tao Xie The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2022
Web Question Answering with Neurosymbolic Program Synthesis [pdf] [code] Jocelyn Chen, Aaron Lamoreaux, Xinyu Wang, Greg Durrett, Osbert Bastani, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2021
Synthesizing Data Structure Refinements from Integrity Constraints [pdf] Shankara Pailoor, Yuepeng Wang, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2021
Interpretable Program Synthesis [pdf][code] Tianyi Zhang, Zhiyang Chen, Yuanli Zhu, Priyan Vaithilingam, Xinyu Wang, Elena Glassman Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021
Automated Policy Synthesis for System Call Sandboxing [pdf] ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award Shankara Pailoor, Xinyu Wang, Hovav Shacham, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (OOPSLA), 2020
Sketch-Driven Regular Expression Generation from Natural Language and Examples [pdf][code] Xi Ye, Qiaochu Chen, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig, Greg Durrett Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL), 2020
Interactive Program Synthesis by Augmented Examples [pdf][code] Tianyi Zhang, London Lowmanstone, Xinyu Wang, Elena Glassman Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2020
Multi-Modal Synthesis of Regular Expressions [pdf][code] Qiaochu Chen, Xinyu Wang, Xi Ye, Greg Durrett, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2020
An Efficient Programming-by-Example Framework [pdf] Xinyu Wang Ph.D. dissertation, 2019
Relational Program Synthesis [pdf] Yuepeng Wang, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (OOPSLA), 2018
Learning Abstractions for Program Synthesis [pdf] Xinyu Wang, Greg Anderson, Isil Dillig, Ken McMillan International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV), 2018
Automated Migration of Hierarchical Data to Relational Tables using Programming-by-Example [pdf][code] Navid Yaghmazadeh, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (VLDB), 2018
Program Synthesis using Abstraction Refinement [pdf] Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig, Rishabh Singh Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (POPL), 2018
Synthesis of Data Completion Scripts using Finite Tree Automata [pdf] Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig, Rishabh Singh Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (OOPSLA), 2017
FIDEX: Filtering Spreadsheet Data using Examples [pdf] Xinyu Wang, Sumit Gulwani, Rishabh Singh Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2016
EXPLORER : Query- and Demand-Driven Exploration of Interprocedural Control Flow Properties [pdf] Yu Feng, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig, Calvin Lin Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2015
Bottom-up Context-Sensitive Pointer Analysis for Java [pdf] Yu Feng, Xinyu Wang, Isil Dillig, Thomas Dillig Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS), 2015

Students

Pinhan Zhao (PhD student, 2023-)
Xiangyu Zhou (PhD student, 2022-)
Rui Dong (PhD student, 2021-)

Service

2024: PLDI (web co-chair)

2023: PLDI (AEC co-chair), OOPSLA (ERC)

2022: PLDI (AEC co-chair and PC), OOPSLA (PC)

2021: PLDI (PC)

2020: CAV (AEC co-chair and PC)