Hi! My name is Yisen Xu, and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Software Engineering at Concordia University in Canada. I am fortunate to be supervised by Dr. Tse-Hsun (Peter) Chen and Dr. Jinqiu Yang. My research interests focus on Large Language Models for Software Engineering (LLM4SE), with an emphasis on automated code refactoring, software quality enhancement, and performance-aware code optimization. I received both my M.Sc. and B.Eng. degrees in Software Engineering from Wuhan University, where I completed my master’s thesis under the supervision of Dr. Jifeng Xuan. Prior to starting my Ph.D., I worked as a software developer at Alibaba Group in China, where I gained hands-on experience in large-scale software development and system reliability engineering. I am passionate about bridging the gap between machine intelligence and software engineering practice. My goal is to design intelligent tools that assist developers in writing better, faster, and more reliable code by leveraging the power of LLMs and software analytics.

Publications

• Yisen Xu, Xiangyang Jia, Lingbo Li, Fan Wu, Jifeng Xuan. Automatically Identifying Calling-Prone Higher-Order Functions of Scala Programs to Assist Testers. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 35, 1278–1294(2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-020-0526-y.
• Yisen Xu, Fan Wu, Xiangyang Jia, Lingbo Li, Jifeng Xuan. Mining the Use of Higher-Order Functions: An Exploratory Study on Scala Programs. Empirical Software Engineering, 25, 4547–4584 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09842-7.
• Yisen Xu, Xiangyang Jia, Jifeng Xuan. “Writing Tests for This Higher-Order Function First: Automatically Identifying Future Callings to Assist Testers”. Proceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware (Internetware 2019), Fukuoka, Japan. 2019.
• Wahidur Rahman, Yisen Xu, Fan Pu, Jifeng Xuan, Xiangyang Jia, Michail Basios, Leslie Kanthan, Lingbo Li, Fan Wu, Baowen Xu. “Clone detection on large scala codebases”. IEEE 14th International Workshop on Software Clones, IWSC 2020, London, ON, Canada, February 18, 2020.
• Yuhang Li, Shi Ying, Xiangyang Jia, Yisen Xu, Lili Zhao, Guoli Cheng, Bingming Wang, Jifeng Xuan. “EH-Recommender: Recommending Exception Handling Strategies Based on Program Context”. Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS 2018), Melbourne, Australia, December 12-14, 2018.

News

• [December 23, 2024] Paper: MUARF: Leveraging Multi-Agent Workflows for Automated Code Refactoring got accepted for ICSE 2025 Student Research Competition.
• [November 30, 2020] Paper: Automatically Identifying Calling-Prone Higher-Order Functions of Scala Programs to Assist Testers got accepted for JCST 2020.
• [September 4, 2020] Paper: Mining the use of higher-order functions got accepted for EMSE 2020.
• [November 21 - November 25, 2019] I attended the National Software Application Conference (NASAC 2019) held in Hangzhou, China.
• [October 27 - October31, 2019] I attended the 11th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware (Internetware 2019) held in Fukuoka, Japan.
• [September 2, 2019] Paper: Writing Tests for This Higher-Order Function First: Automatically Identifying Future Callings to Assist Testers got accepted to Internetware 2019.
• [August 2, 2019] One paper got accepted to NASAC 2019.
• [July 15 - July 19, 2019] I attended the ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis(ISSTA 2019) held in Beijing, China.

Awards & Honors

• Conference Travel Support – Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University, 2025
• Concordia Split Graduate Fellowship GCS, Concordia University, 2024
• Concordia International Tuition Award of Excellence, Concordia University, 2024
• National Scholarship, China, 2021
• First Prize Scholarship, Wuhan University, 2021
• First Prize Scholarship, Wuhan University, 2020
• Second Prize Scholarship, Wuhan University, 2019
• Second Prize Scholarship, Wuhan University, 2018