Tianyang Zhou (周天阳)

I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Security and Privacy group at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, co-advised by Prof. Varun Chandrasekaran and Prof. Kirill Levchenko. My research focuses on program translation and software security, with an emphasis on machine learning for code. I currently develop techniques for verified C-to-Rust translation and analyze security implications of AI-generated code.

Before joining UIUC, I received M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from University of California, San Diego, and my B.Eng. degree in Software Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Publications

SoK: Understanding (New) Security Issues Across AI4Code Use Cases
Qilong Wu*, Taoran Li*, Tianyang Zhou*, and Varun Chandrasekaran. Under review, 2025. *Equal Contribution
LLM-Driven Multi-step Translation from C to Rust using Static Analysis
Tianyang Zhou, Haowen Lin, Somesh Jha, Mihai Christodorescu, Kirill Levchenko, and Varun Chandrasekaran. Pre-print, 2025
Fine-grained Library Sandboxing for Rust Ecosystem
Tianyang Zhou. Master’s Thesis, University of California, San Diego, 2023