About me

Wei Yang(杨威)

Hi! This is Wei Yang, a PhD student in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am advised by Prof. Cal Gunter and Prof. Tao Xie. I received an M.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2013, advised by Prof. Tao Xie, and a B.E. in Software Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2011, advised by Prof. Jianjun Zhao.

 

Research Interests

(Refer to my CV to find more)

 

My primary research interest is software engineering and security. My past research experience spans the spectrum from automated testing (ORBIT), through text analysis (WHYPER), to malware detection (AppContext). I am generally interested in tools and techniques for helping programmers test and write bug-free and secure mobile applications. I am recently focused on using program analysis, natural language processing techniques and cognitive analysis to bridge the gap between user perceptions and app behaviors in mobile applications.

 

Publication (Google Scholar)

 

Conference

  • AppContext Analyzing Contextual Use of Permissions in Android Applications
    • Wei Yang, Xusheng Xiao, Benjamin Andow, Sihan Li, Tao Xie and William Enck

AppContext: Differentiating Malicious and Benign Mobile App Behaviors Using Context

To appear in Proc. of 37th International Conference on Software Engineering
(ICSE 2015), Florence, Italy, May 2015. (acceptance rate: 18.5%, 84 out of 452)

  • WHYPER Automated risk assessment for mobile applications.
    • Rahul Pandita, Xusheng Xiao, Wei Yang, William Enck and Tao Xie

WHYPER: Towards Automating Risk Assessment of Mobile Applications

In Proc. of 22nd USENIX Security Symposium.
(USENIX Security 2013), Washinton, D.C., USA, August 2013. (acceptance rate: 16.2%, 45 out of 277)

[BibTeX][Website][Slides]

  • ORBIT Automated testing for mobile applications.
    • Wei Yang, Mukul Prasad, and Tao Xie.

A Grey-box Approach for Automated GUI-Model Generation of Mobile Applications

In Proc. of 16th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering.
(FASE 2013), Rome, Italy, March 2013. (acceptance rate: 23.2%, 26 out of 112) .
[BibTeX][Website][Slides]

 

Poster and Other Publications

  • Wei Yang, Xusheng Xiao, Rahul Pandita, William Enck and Tao Xie.

Improving Mobile Application Security via Bridging User Expectations and Application Behaviors.

In Proc. Of Symposium and Bootcamp on the Science of Security.

(HotSoS), Raleigh, NC, April 2014.

[PDF][Slides]

 

Other Talks

  • Wei Yang.

Improving Mobile Application Security via Bridging User Expectations and Application Behaviors.

In 10th CSL student conference, Champaign, IL, Feburary 2015.

[Talk]

 

 

Other Project

  • AT-EASE Early usability evaluation of mobile applications.
    • Wei Yang* and Xiao Yu*

AT-EASE: A Tool for Early and Quick Usability Evaluation of Smartphone Application

In progress.
*The name of first two authors are sorted by the alphabetical order of surnames.

  • World up A Knowledge Based Search Engine in Chinese. Here is the technical report in Chinese.

 

Education

 

PhD student, in Computer Science,

Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, 2011-2013; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, since 2013

 

Master of Science, in Computer Science,

Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, 2013

 

Bachelor of Engineering, in Software Engineering,

School of Software, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2011

 

Bachelor of Business, in Accounting,

Antai College of Economics & Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2011

 

Working Experience

 

  • Research Intern, Trusted Systems Innovation Group, Fujitsu Lab of America, 05/2014-08/2014
    • I’ve been working on research project on mobile malware detection. (Mentor: Mukul Prasad)

 

  • Research Intern, Trusted Systems Innovation Group, Fujitsu Lab of America, 05/2013-08/2013
    • I’ve been working on studying the performance issues of hybrid mobile applications. (Mentor: Mukul Prasad)

 

  • Research Intern, Trusted Systems Innovation Group, Fujitsu Lab of America, 05/2012-08/2012
    • I’ve been working on research project on mobile application testing. (Mentor: Mukul Prasad)

 

  • ETL Engineer, Data Platform & Delivery Team, eBay , 07/2010 –06/2011
    • I’ve been doing enhancement job of data licensing platform and daily job about CLV and SLA in Data Feed Scrum Team. (Mentor: Daniel Zhang).

 

Academic Activities

  • Artifact Evaluation Committee Member
    • ECOOP 2015
  • External Review
    • ASE 2012; ISSTA 2012; ISSTA 2013; SPLASH 2013; MSR 2014; ICST 2014; ICSE 2015; ICST 2015
  • Academic Conference Volunteer
    • CCS 2012; FSE 2012

 

 

Personal

  • My working log.
  • I was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. I graduated from Wuhan Foreign Languages School. My girlfriend Yan Zhao were from Shanghai. We have been together since her first year in SJTU.
  • My English name is David, which is given by my mum who is an English teacher.
  • When I’m bored, I read Dijkstra’s manuscript and TAOCP for fun.
  • Besides research, I love soccer very much, and I am a fan of AC Milan. I was member of soccer team and badminton team when I was in SJTU. Contact me if you also like to play!
  • My favorite novel is Wuxu Biji. 务虚笔记 (lit. “Notes on Principles”). By Shi Tiesheng
  • For anyone who wanna make friends or discuss problem with me, please drop me an email for requesting my MSN, GTalk or Skype ID, and tell me yours:-)