Kunsong Zhao

Kunsong Zhao

Ph.D. Candidate

Kunsong is currently a Ph.D candidate in Computer Science at Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Xiapu Luo and co-supervision of Prof. Lei Xue. Before that, he received his Master and Bachelor degrees in Software Engineering from Wuhan University in 2022 and Hubei University in 2019, respectively. His research interests lie in designing security systems and improving software quality with the help of static and dynamic program analysis, formal verification, and deep learning techniques. Currently, he mainly focuses on binary analysis, blockchain and smart contract security, and decentralized applications.

📜 Curriculum Vitae

🎓 Educations

  • 2022.09 - present, Ph.D. in Computer Science, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
  • 2019.09 - 2022.06, M.Eng. in Software Engineering, Wuhan University.
  • 2015.09 - 2019.06, B.Eng. in Software Engineering, Hubei University.

📝 Publications

  • USENIX SEC 2025
    Automated Soundness and Completeness Vetting of Polygon zkEVM [Paper]
    X. Peng, Z. Sun, K. Zhao, Z. Ma, Z. Li, J. Jiang, X. Luo, and Y. Zhang
    Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium, 2025.

  • FSE 2025
    Recasting Type Hints from WebAssembly Contracts [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Li, W. Chen, X. Luo, T. Chen, G. Meng, and Y. Zhou
    Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering, 2025.

  • ICSE 2024
    VGX: Large-Scale Sample Generation for Boosting Learning-Based Software Vulnerability Analyses [Paper]
    Y. Nong, R. Fang, G. Yi, K. Zhao, X. Luo, F. Chen, and H. Cai
    Proceedings of the 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, 2024.

  • TASLP 2024
    Question-directed Reasoning with Relation-aware Graph Attention Network for Complex Question Answering over Knowledge Graph [Paper]
    G. Zhang, J. Liu, G. Zhou, K. Zhao, Z. Xie, and B. Huang
    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 2024.

  • ESEC/FSE 2023
    DeepInfer: Deep Type Inference from Smart Contract Bytecode [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Li, J. Li, H. Ye, X. Luo, and T. Chen
    Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2023.

  • EMSE 2023
    The Impact of Class Imbalance Techniques on Crashing Fault Residence Prediction Models [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Xu, M. Yan, T. Zhang, L. Xue, M. Fan, and J. Keung
    Empirical Software Engineering, 2023.

  • IST 2023
    Detecting Multi-Type Self-Admitted Technical Debt with Generative Adversarial Network-based Neural Networks [Paper]
    J. Yu, X. Zhou, X. Liu, J. Liu, Z. Xie, and K. Zhao
    Information and Software Technology, 2023.

  • JSS 2022
    Graph4Web: A Relation-Aware Graph Attention Network for Web Service Classification [Paper]
    K. Zhao, J. Liu, Z. Xu, X. Liu, L. Xue, Z. Xie, Y. Zhou, and X. Wang
    Journal of Systems and Software, 2022.
    Invited to SANER'2023 as part of the Journal First Track.

  • JSS 2022
    Exploiting Gated Graph Neural Network for Detecting and Explaining Self-Admitted Technical Debts [Paper]
    J. Yu, K. Zhao, J. Liu, X. Liu, Z. Xu, and X. Wang
    Journal of Systems and Software, 2022.

  • FCS 2022
    Effort-Aware Cross-project Just-in-Time Defect Prediction Framework for Mobile Apps [Paper]
    T. Cheng, K. Zhao, S. Sun, M. Mateen, and J. Wen
    Frontiers of Computer Science, 2022.

  • TOIS 2021
    Dual Gated Graph Attention Networks with Dynamic Iterative Training for Cross-Lingual Entity Alignment [Paper]
    Z. Xie, R. Zhu, K. Zhao, J. Liu, G. Zhou, and J. Huang
    ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 2021.

  • ICPC 2021
    Predicting Crash Fault Residence via Simplified Deep Forest Based on A Reduced Feature Set [Paper]
    K. Zhao, J. Liu, Z. Xu, L. Li, M. Yan, J. Yu, and Y. Zhou
    Proceedings of the 29th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension, 2021.

  • IETS 2021
    A Compositional Model for Effort-Aware Just-In-Time Defect Prediction on Android Apps [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Xu, M. Yan, L. Xue, W. Li, and G. Catolino
    IET Software, 2021.

  • SAC 2021
    Just-in-Time Defect Prediction for Android Apps via Imbalanced Deep Learning Model [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Xu, M. Yan, Y. Tang, M. Fan, and G. Catolino
    Proceedings of the 36th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing, 2021.

  • IST 2021
    A Comprehensive Investigation of the Impact of Feature Selection Techniques on Crashing Fault Residence Prediction Models [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Xu, M. Yan, T. Zhang, D. Yang, and W. Li
    Information and Software Technology, 2021.

  • TR 2021
    Effort-Aware Just-in-Time Bug Prediction for Mobile Apps via Cross-triplet Deep Feature Embedding [Paper]
    Z. Xu, K. Zhao, T. Zhang, C. Fu, M. Yan, Z. Xie, X. Zhang, and G. Catolino
    IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 2021.

  • TR 2021
    Simplified Deep Forest Model based Just-In-Time Defect Prediction for Android Mobile Apps [Paper]
    K. Zhao, Z. Xu, T. Zhang, Y. Tang, and M. Yan
    IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 2021.

  • JSS 2020
    Imbalanced metric learning for crashing fault residence prediction [Paper]
    Z. Xu#, K. Zhao# (equal contribution), M. Yan, P. Yuan, L. Xu, Y. Lei, and X. Zhang
    Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), 2020.
    Invited to ICPC'2021 as part of the Journal First Track.

  • COLING 2020
    A Contextual Alignment Enhanced Cross Graph Attention Network for Cross-lingual Entity Alignment [Paper]
    Z. Xie, R. Zhu, K. Zhao, J. Liu, G. Zhou, and J. Huang
    Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 2020.

📚 Teaching

🎖 Selected Awards

  • 2024 Polkadot Blockchain Academy, Polkadot Foundation.
  • 2023 Outstanding Scientific Paper of Hubei Province, Hubei Association for Science & Technology.
  • 2023 Ethereum Foundation Academic Grant, Ethereum Foundation on Blockchain Security Research.
  • 2021 First Prize, Global MAX Performance Cloud Computing Innovation Competition (MAXP).
  • 2021 Huawei Scholarship.
  • 2020 First Prize, China Conference on Knowledge Graph and Semantic Computing (CCKS).
  • 2018 Meritorious Winner, Mathematical Contest In Modeling / Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling.

🌴 Services

Program Committee Member

Journal/Conference Reviewer

  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
  • The 30th SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD)
  • The 19th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm)
  • IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE)
  • IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (TMM)
  • Software: Practice and Experience (SPE)