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 am currently developing techniques for verified C-to-Rust translation and analyzing the 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

Talks

• SACTOR: LLM-Driven Multi-Step Translation from C to Rust using Static Analysis
  Invited Talk at Google, May 2025

Teaching

• UIUC CS 421: Programming Languages (Summer 2025), Teaching Assistant
• UIUC CS 461/ECE 422: Computer Security I (Spring 2025), Teaching Assistant
• UIUC CS 461/ECE 422: Computer Security I (Fall 2024), Teaching Assistant