Hengcheng Zhu 朱恒成

I am a PhD candidate at the CSE department of HKUST. I work with Prof. Shing-Chi Cheung in the CASTLE research group. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in engineering at SUSTech in 2020. My research focuses on software testing and program analysis. Currently, I am working on research projects in fuzzy testing, mocking, IoT testing, and metamorphic testing. During my spare time, I visit various hiking trails in Hong Kong and take nice photos there. I am also a tech enthusiast and I contribute to open-source projects such as Homebrew and Zed.

Education

• The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, Since Sep. 2020
  • In CASTLE research group, advised by Prof. Shing-Chi Cheung
• Southern University of Science and Technology: B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology, Sep. 2016 - Jun. 2020
  • In Software Quality Lab, advised by Prof. Yepang Liu
  • With outstanding graduate honor & distinguished Bachelor's thesis honor

Publications

1. FSE 2025 Understanding and Characterizing Mock Assertions in Unit Tests.
   Hengcheng Zhu, Valerio Terragni, Lili Wei, Shing-Chi Cheung^*, Jiarong Wu, and Yepang Liu.
   In Proceedings of The ACM on Software Engineering (PACMSE), Issue FSE 2025. Trondheim, Norway. June 2025.
   DOI Preprint Artifacts
2. FSE 2025 SemBIC: Semantic-aware Identification of Bug-inducing Commits.
   Xiao Chen, Hengcheng Zhu, Jialun Cao, Ming Wen, and Shing-Chi Cheung^*.
   In Proceedings of The ACM on Software Engineering (PACMSE), Issue FSE 2025. Trondheim, Norway. June 2025.
   DOI Preprint Artifacts
3. ASE 2024 MR-Adopt: Automatic Deduction of Input Transformation Function for Metamorphic Testing.
   Congying Xu, Songqiang Chen, Jiarong Wu, Shing-Chi Cheung^*, Valerio Terragni, Hengcheng Zhu, and Jialun Cao^*.
   In The 39^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering. California, United States. November 2024.
   DOI Preprint
4. TOSEM 2024 MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases.
   Congying Xu, Valerio Terragni, Hengcheng Zhu, Jiarong Wu, and Shing-Chi Cheung^*.
   In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 33, Issue 6, June 2024.
   DOI Preprint
5. TOSEM 2023 StubCoder: Automated Generation and Repair of Stub Code for Mock Objects.
   Hengcheng Zhu, Lili Wei, Valerio Terragni, Yepang Liu, Shing-Chi Cheung^*, Jiarong Wu, Qin Sheng, Bing Zhang, and Lihong Song.
   In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 33, Issue 1, January 2024.
   DOI Preprint Slides
6. ASE 2021 Why Do Developers Remove Lambda Expressions in Java.
   Mingwei Zheng, Jun Yang, Ming Wen^*, Hengcheng Zhu, Yepang Liu, and Hai Jin.
   In The 36^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Melbourne, Australia, November 2021.
   DOI Preprint Slides
7. ASE 2020 MockSniffer: Characterizing and Recommending Mocking Decisions for Unit Tests.
   Hengcheng Zhu^#, Lili Wei^#, Ming Wen, Yepang Liu^*, Shing-Chi Cheung^*, Qin Sheng, and Cui Zhou.
   In The 35^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Melbourne, Australia, September 2020.
   DOI Preprint Slides Talk Artifact
8. SANER 2020 How Do Python Framework APIs Evolve? An Exploratory Study.
   Zhaoxu Zhang^#, Hengcheng Zhu^#, Ming Wen, Yida Tao, Yepang Liu^*, and Yingfei Xiong.
   In The 2020 IEEE 27^th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, London, Ontario, Canada, February 2020.
   DOI Preprint Slides Talk Artifact

Honors and Awards

• HKUST RedBird Academic Excellence Award, 2024
• HKUST Postgraduate studentship, 2020 - 2024
• SUSTech Distinguished Bachelor's Thesis, 2020
• SUSTech Outstanding Graduate, 2020
• SUSTech Annual Outstanding Students Scholarship (Third Class), 2017, 2018, and 2019
• SUSTech CSE Outstanding Teaching Assistant, Fall 2018 & Spring 2019
• SUSTech Outstanding Freshmen Scholarship (Third Class), 2016

Academic Services

• PC member, ICSE 2025 Artifact Evaluation Track
• Shadow PC member, ICSE 2025 Research Track
• Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) in 2024
• PC member, ICSE 2024 Artifact Evaluation Track
• PC member, ISSRE 2023 Artifact Evaluation Track
• PC member, ESEC/FSE 2023 Artifact Evaluation Track
• PC member, ISSTA 2023 Artifact Evaluation Track
• Student volunteer, ISSTA 2019

Teaching

I worked as a teaching assistant in the following courses at HKUST.

• COMP 1021 Introduction to Computer Science (Python Programming) (Fall 2023-24)
• COMP 3021 Java Programming (Fall 2022-23)
• COMP 3021 Java Programming (Fall 2021-22)
• COMP 2012 Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures (C/C++ Programming) (Spring 2020-21)