Xiaoyu Sun Xiaoyu Sun
Lecturer (a.k.a. Assistant Professor)
The School of Computing
Australian National University

Email: Xiaoyu.Sun1@anu.edu.au
You can also access my Google Scholar Citations
Github, LinkedIn 		Prospective Students:

I'm actively recruiting (self-motivated and active) PhD students. Please contact me if you are a self-motivated PhD student (or graduate student interested in our PhD program) with strong programming skills and strong interests in software analysis, security and machine learning as well as deep learning.

I am always open to collaboration. Please contact me if you feel our research interest overlaps. 😃


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.

News

  • [2025-10-17] Our paper, "Context-Free Grammar Inference for Complex Programming Languages in Black Box Settings" was accepted to ICSE!!
  • [2025-10-09] Our paper, "A Comparative Study of Android Performance Issues in Real-world Applications and Literature" was accepted to TOSEM!!
  • [2025-09-27] Our paper, "Navigating the Labyrinth: Path-Sensitive Unit Test Generation with Large Language Models" was accepted to ASE!!
  • [2025-05-29] Our paper, "Privacy Bills of Materials (PriBOM): A Transparent Privacy Information Inventory for Collaborative Privacy Notice Generation in Mobile App Development" was accepted to PoPETs!!
  • [2025-03-30] Our paper, "Fixing Outside the Box: Uncovering Tactics for Open-Source Security Issue Management" was accepted to ISSTA!!
  • [2025-03-30] Our paper, "A Comparative Study between Android Phone and TV Apps" was accepted to ASE Journal!!
  • [2025-02-11] Our paper, "DeclarUI: Bridging Design and Development with Automated Declarative UI Code Generation" was accepted to FSE!!
  • [2024-10-14] Our paper, "A^3-CodGen: A Repository-Level Code Generation Framework for Code Reuse with Local-Aware, Global-Aware, and Third-Party-Library-Aware" was accepted to TSE!!
  • [2024-08-20] Our paper, "Incremental Context-free Grammar Inference in Black Box Settings" was accepted to ASE 2024!!
  • [2024-05-23] I am serving on the Programm Committee of FSE'25. Welcome submissions!
  • [2024-04-09] I am serving on the Programm Committee of ISSTA'25. Welcome submissions!
  • [2024-03-09] I am serving on the Programm Committee of ISSRE'24. Welcome submissions!
  • [2023-12-19] I am serving on the Programm Committee of LCTES'24. Welcome submissions!
  • [2023-11-19] I am serving on the tool and demo track Programm Committee of ISSTA/ECOOP 2024. Welcome submissions!
  • [2023-11-28] I am serving on the Programm Committee of ASE'24. Welcome submissions!
  • [2023-11-19] I am serving on the Programm Committee of ICSE'25. Welcome submissions!
  • [2023-10-22] I am serving on the ACM CCS 2023 Artifact Evaluation program committee!
  • [2023-10-20] I am serving as a reviewer for TKDE!
  • [2023-09-29] I am serving as a reviewer for TOSEM!
  • [2023-09-18] I am serving on the MOBILESoft 2024 program committee!
  • [2023-09-16] I am serving on the MSR Data and Tool Showcase Track 2024 program committee!
  • [2023-09-16] I am serving on the AST 2024 program committee!
  • [2023-08-24] I am serving on the ICFEM-Doctoral Symposium 2023 program committee!
  • [2023-07-29] I am serving on the SEAMS 2024 program committee!
  • [2023-07-21] Our paper, "LazyCow: A Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing Tool for Taming Android Fragmentation" was accepted to FSE-DEMO 2023!!
  • [2023-06-29] Our paper, "Taming Android Fragmentation through Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing" was selected to appear at ASE-JF 2023!!
  • [2023-06-09] I am super honored to receive the School of Computing Pioneering Women Lectureship Grant !! 💸 💸 💸
  • [2023-05-30] I am serving on the A-mobile 2023 program committee!
  • [2023-05-19] I am serving on the PRDC 2023 program committee!
  • [2023-04-07] Our paper entitled "Taming Android Fragmentation through Lightweight Crowdsourced Testing" was accepted to TSE 2023 !!
  • [2023-03-21] Attended the Women in STEMM Leadership Summit!
  • [2023-01-31] Become a reviewer for Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)
  • [2022-12-01] Selected as a Junior PC Member at MSR2023
  • [2022-11-24] Gave an invited talk titled "Demystifying Security and Compatibility Issues in Android apps" at Macquarie University.
  • [2022-10-13] Our paper entitled "Demystifying Hidden Sensitive Operations in Android apps" was accepted to TOSEM 2022.

    • Selected Publications

    See this Full List page.
    ICSE Feifei Li, Xiao Chen, Xiaoyu Sun, Xi Xiao, Shaohua Wang, Yong Ding, Sheng Wen and Qingli, Context-Free Grammar Inference for Complex Programming Languages in Black Box Settings, the 48th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026)
    TOSEM Dianshu Liao, Shidong Pan, Siyuan Yang, Yanjie Zhao, Zhenchang Xing, and Xiaoyu Sun, A Comparative Study of Android Performance Issues in Real-world Applications and Literature, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 2025
    ASE Dianshu Liao, Xin Yin, Shidong Pan, Chao Ni, Zhenchang Xing, and Xiaoyu Sun, Navigating the Labyrinth: Path-Sensitive Unit Test Generation with Large Language Models, the 40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2025
    ASE-demo Haochen Gong, Zhen Tao, Shidong Pan, Zhenchang Xing, and Xiaoyu Sun, Towards Context-aware Mobile Privacy Notice: Implementation of A Deployable Contextual Privacy Policies Generator, the 40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Tool Demonstrations Track 2025
    PETS Zhen Tao, Shidong Pan, Zhenchang Xing, Xiaoyu Sun, Omar Haggag, John Grundy, Jingjie Li and Liming Zhu, Privacy Bills of Materials (PriBOM): A Transparent Privacy Information Inventory for Collaborative Privacy Notice Generation in Mobile App Development, The 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), 2025
    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]

    TopResearcher | CS: Best Paper Awards | The Chinese Conference/Journal Rank | SA3Repo