Xiaoyu is a Lecturer of Software Engineering at Australian National University. Prior to that, she obtained her PhD degree at Monash University from 2019 to 2023, under the supervision of Li. Li and John Grundy. Her research field interests mainly lie in the field of Mobile Software Engineering (i.e., Mobile Security and quality assurance) and Intelligent Software Engineering (SE4AI, AI4SE). In particular, her research focuses on applying static code analysis, dynamic program testing, and natural language processing techniques to strengthen the security and reliability of software systems. Specifically, her current research projects include developing tools for Android defects detection, e.g., compatibility issues, and privacy leaks. Xiaoyu's research has been published in top-tier conferences and journals including ICSE, ASE, TOSEM, ISSRE, MSR, and IST. She has also established extensive collaboration with the industry, including Bytedance and Alibaba.

🔬 SMATLab@ANU
SMATLab is an Innovative Software Analysis and Intelligence Computing Research Laboratory focusing on developing practical techniques to assure software quality and secure software systems. Our lab works closely with the SMAT Lab in progress. Our research interests mainly lie in the field of Mobile Software Engineering and Intelligent Software Engineering. If you are interested in collaborating with us, please contact us directly. Our lab is looking for motivated PhDs. Our research projects require programming basic knowledges. You are not required to learn all the programming languages but you are required to be familiar with at least one (e.g., java, c/c++, Python). Please send me your resume and transcripts if you are interested in software security.

As a Female in CS
As a female studying computer science, I am always committed to encourage more and more women involved in computer science or other STEM fields.

News

Selected Publications

ISSTA	Lyuye Zhang, Jiahui Wu, Liu Chengwei, Kaixuan Li, Xiaoyu Sun, Lida Zhao, Chong Wang and Yang Liu, Fixing Outside the Box: Uncovering Tactics for Open-Source Security Issue Management, The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2025, 2025
ASEJ	Yonghui Liu, Xiao Chen, Yue Liu, Pingfan Kong, Tegawendé F. Bissyande, Jacques Klein, Xiaoyu Sun, Chunyang Chen, and John Grundy, A Comparative Study between Android Phone and TV Apps, Automated Software Engineering 2025, 2025
FSE	Ting Zhou, Yanjie Zhao, Xinyi Hou, Xiaoyu Sun, Kai Chen, and Haoyu Wang, DeclarUI: Bridging Design and Development with Automated Declarative UI Code Generation, The ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) 2025, 2025 [pdf]
TSE	Dianshu Liao, Shidong Pan, Xiaoyu Sun, Xiaoxue Ren, Qing Huang, Zhenchang Xing, Huan Jin and Qinying Li, A^3-CodGen: A Repository-Level Code Generation Framework for Code Reuse with Local-Aware, Global-Aware, and Third-Party-Library-Aware, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) 2024, 2024 [pdf]
ASE	Feifei Li, Xiao Chen, Xi Xiao, Xiaoyu Sun, Chuan Chen, Shaohua Wang, and Jitao Han, Incremental Context-free Grammar Inference in Black Box Settings, The 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2024), 2024 [pdf]
A-Mobile	Haonan Chen, Daihang Chen, Yonghui Liu, Xiaoyu Sun, and Li Li, Are Your Android App Analyzers Still Relevant? MOBILESoft 2024 [pdf]
FSE-JF	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Li Li, Haipeng Cai, John Grundy, Jordan Samhi, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé and Jacques Klein, Demystifying Hidden Sensitive Operations in Android apps, The ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023 Journal-First Track), 2023 [pdf] [bib]
A-Mobile	Haonan Hu, Yue Liu, Yanjie Zhao, Yonghui Liu, Xiaoyu Sun, Chakkrit Tantithamthavorn and Li Li, Detecting Temporal Inconsistency in Biased Datasets for Android Malware Detection, A-Mobile 2023 Workshop of the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (A-Mobile 2023), 2023 [pdf]
FSE - Demo	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Yonghui Liu, John Grundy and Li Li, LazyCow: A Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing Tool for Taming Android Fragmentation, The 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE DEMO) 2023, 2023 [pdf] [bib]
ASE - JF	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Yonghui Liu, John Grundy and Li Li, Taming Android Fragmentation through Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing, the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE Journal-First) 2023, 2023 [pdf] [bib]
TSE	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Yonghui Liu, John Grundy and Li Li, Taming Android Fragmentation through Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) 2023, 2023 [pdf] [bib]
TOSEM	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Li Li, Haipeng Cai, John Grundy, Jordan Samhi, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé and Jacques Klein, Demystifying Hidden Sensitive Operations in Android apps, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 2022, 2022 [pdf] [bib]
ASE	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Yanjie Zhao, Pei Liu, John Grundy and Li Li, Mining Android API Usage to Generate Unit Test Cases for Pinpointing Compatibility Issues, The 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2022), 2022  [pdf]  [bib]
A-Mobile	Pei Liu, Xiaoyu Sun, Yanjie Zhao, Yonghui Liu, John Grundy, and Li Li, A First Look at CI/CD Adoptions in Open-Source Android Apps, The 5th International Workshop on Advances in Mobile App Analysis (A-Mobile 2022), 2022  [pdf]  [bib]
ICSE	Jordan Samhi, Jun Gao, Nadia Daoudi, Pierre Graux, Henri Hoyez, Xiaoyu Sun, Kevin Allix, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé and Jacques Klein, JuCify: a step towards Android code unification for enhanced static analysis, Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022), 2022  [pdf]  [bib]
ICSE-Demo	Yanjie Zhao, Li Li, Xiaoyu Sun, Pei Liu, John Grundy, Code Implementation Recommendation for Android GUI Components, The 44th International Conference on Software Engineering, Demonstrations Track (ICSE 2022), 2022 [pdf] [bib]
ASEW	Yonghui Liu, Li Li, Pingfan Kong, Xiaoyu Sun and Tegawendé F. Bissyandé, A First Look at Security Risks of Android TV Apps, The 36th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering Workshops (ASEW 2021). 2021  [pdf]  [bib]
IST	Yanjie Zhao, Li Li, Xiaoyu Sun, Pei Liu, and John Grundy, Icon2Code: Recommending code implementations for android GUI components, Information and Software Technology (IST) 2021. 2021  [pdf]  [bib]
TOSEM	Xiaoyu Sun, Li Li, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé, Jacques Klein, Damien Octeau, and John Grundy, Taming reflection: An essential step toward whole-program analysis of android apps, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 2021. 2021  [pdf]  [bib]
ISSRE	Xiaoyu Sun, Xiao Chen, Kui Liu, Sheng Wen, Li Li, and John Grundy, Characterizing Sensor Leaks in Android Apps, The IEEE 32nd International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 2021. 2021  [pdf]  [bib]
MSR	Pei Liu, Li Li, Yanjie Zhao, Xiaoyu Sun, and John Grundy, Androzooopen: Collecting large-scale open source android apps for the research community, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) 2020. 2020  [pdf]  [bib]