Dr Huanting Wang

Profile

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Computer Science at the University of Leeds. I am a member of the Distributed Systems and Services Group at the University of Leeds. My research sits at the intersection of machine learning, program analysis, software security and code optimisation, with the overarching aim of making intelligent software engineering tools more accessible, reliable and deployable in practice.

My work focuses on three connected themes. The first is applied machine learning for software engineering: developing precise, automated and robust ML- and LLM-based techniques for program understanding and for improving the reliability of learned models at deployment time. The second is software security, where I combine machine learning, large language models, program analysis and system-level techniques to detect bugs and vulnerabilities; this work has uncovered over 100 bugs and more than 50 CVEs in real-world open-source projects. The third is code optimisation, where I use machine learning, reinforcement learning and statistical evaluation to improve the runtime efficiency of programs and systems, including deployment issues in distributed settings.

My research has been recognised with a Distinguished Paper Award at CGO 2025, an AI SuperConnector Award, a Mitacs Globalink Research Award and the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad. I serve on the programme and artifact evaluation committees of venues including CGO, KDD, ISSTA and CCS, and review for a number of international journals.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, University of Leeds, 2021 - 2025