I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), working under the supervision of Prof. Sam Malek in the SEAL research group. I received my B.Eng. degree from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in 2022.

Education

• University of California, Irvine Sept. 2022 - Present
  • Degree: Ph.D. in Software Engineering
  • Member of the Software Engineering and Analysis Lab (SEAL), supervised by Prof. Sam Malek
  • Research Focus: Software Maintenance, Software Evolution, Software Testing, and Software Accessibility
  • GPA: 4.00/4.00
• Southern University of Science and Technology Sept. 2018 - June 2022
  • Degree: B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology
  • Member of the Software Quality Lab (SQL), supervised by Prof. Yepang Liu
  • Graduated with outstanding graduate honors and distinguished undergraduate thesis honors
  • GPA: 91.27/100

Publications

• ICSE 2026 Yirui He, Yongbo Chen, Jessy Ayala, Yecheng Zhou, Qiran Wang, and Joshua Garcia. Breaking Strong Encapsulation: A Comprehensive Study of Java Module Abuse. In Proceedings of The 48^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Apr. 2026.Preprint

• FSE 2025 Yuntianyi Chen, Yuqi Huai, Yirui He, Shilong Li, Changnam Hong, Qi Alfred Chen, and Joshua Garcia. A Comprehensive Study of Bug-Fix Patterns in Autonomous Driving Systems. In Proceedings of The ACM on Software Engineering (PACMSE), Issue FSE 2025. Trondheim, Norway, June 2025.DOI

Honors and Awards

• Chair’s Award, Graduate Student Fellowship from Department of Informatics, UCI, 2022
• Distinguished UG thesis, SUSTech, 2022
• Highest Honor in CSE for Outstanding Academic Achievement, SUSTech, 2022
• Annual outstanding students scholarship, SUSTech, 2019 - 2022
• Outstanding teaching assistant, CSE department, SUSTech, 2021
• Outstanding freshmen scholarship, First Class, SUSTech, 2018

Services

Artifact Evaluation

• PC Member Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2026 (NDSS 2026)
• PC Member The 47^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2025)
• PC Member The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2025)
• PC Member Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2025 (NDSS 2025)
• PC Member The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2024)
• PC Member The 34^th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2023)

Research Track (Conferences)

• Sub-reviewer of 20^th IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2023)

Conference Volunteer

• Conference Volunteer of 28^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2020)

Teaching

I have served as a teaching assistant for the following courses at UCI:

• Applied Data Structure and Algorithm (2026 Fall)
• GDIM 139 Game Engineering (2025 Spring)
• INF 43 Introduction to Software Engineering (2025 Winter)
• SWE 244P Concurrent Programming (2025 Fall, 2026 Fall)
• SWE 246P Mobile Programming (2025 Fall)
• SWE 265P Reverse Engineering and Modeling (2024 Spring)
• IN4MATX 113 Requirement Analysis and Engineering (2024 Winter)
• IN4MATX 143. Information Visualization (2023 Spring)
• IN4MATX 122. Software Design: Structure and Implementation (2023 Winter)
• I&C SCI 45J. Programming in Java as a Second Language (2023 Fall, 2024 Fall)

Outside the Lab

Beyond my academic pursuits, I have a strong interest in outdoor activities such as hiking. In China, I particularly enjoy the landscapes of Nanjiluo (南极洛) and the Wensu Grand Canyon (温宿大峡谷). In the United States, some of my most memorable experiences include Angels Landing and The Narrows in Zion National Park, as well as the Skyline Trail on Mount Rainier.

I am also passionate about landscape photography, and you can view a selection of my work on Instagram.