Aashish Yadavally

ECSS 4.417

The University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, TX 75082

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida.

I recently earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, where I was advised by Prof. Tien N. Nguyen. My research broadly lies at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Software Engineering (SE). In particular, I explore if/how large language models understand and reason about program behaviors. More recently, I am interested in quantifying such understanding capabilities, and training the next generation of code reasoning models to optimize software development processes. My work has been recognized by the community with multiple accolades, including the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award and the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Award.

Prospective Students: I am actively looking for brilliant students with a strong foundation and interest in programming languages, software engineering, and/or AI to join my research group, SAIL@UCF (Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence Lab, webpage coming shortly). We are ranked #15 in Software Engineering on CSRankings (a metrics-based ranking of top CS institutions).

Feel free to reach out with a copy of your CV and background: aashish [dot] yadavally [at] ucf [dot] edu

Research Interests (TL;DR): AI for Software Engineering, Software Security, Software Maintenance, Large Reasoning Models for Source Code

You can find me at the following Conferences or Events
2024 OOPSLA (Pasadena, CA, USA), FSE (Porto de Galinhas, Brazil)
2023 ESEC/FSE (San Francisco, CA, USA), ICSE (Melbourne, Australia)
2022 ASE (Detroit, MI, USA), ICSE (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), SANER (Virtual)

Favourite Quotes

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
“If you work with determination and with perfection, success will follow.” ~ Dhirubhai Ambani

news

Sep 3, 2025	Joined CS@UCF as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Looking forward to this new chapter in life!
Aug 4, 2025	After five years in TX, relocated to the beautiful Orlando, FL!
Jul 7, 2025	Successfully defended my Ph.D. and am officially Dr. Aashish Yadavally now!
Apr 1, 2025	Two papers accepted at FSE 2025.
Jan 1, 2025	Two papers accepted at ICSE 2025.
Dec 3, 2024	Successfully defended my Ph.D. Topic Proposal. Special thanks to my committee members, Drs. Tien N. Nguyen, Wei Yang, Shiyi Wei, and Baishakhi Ray.
Jul 15, 2024	Will be attending FSE 2024 at Porto de Galinhas, Brazil.

selected publications

Large Language Models for Safe Minimization

Aashish Yadavally, Xiaokai Rong, Phat Nguyen, and Tien N. Nguyen

2025

Bib PDF

@article{YadavallyRNN25,
  author = {Yadavally, Aashish and Rong, Xiaokai and Nguyen, Phat and Nguyen, Tien N.},
  title = {Large Language Models for Safe Minimization},
  year = {2025},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering},
  pages = {To Appear},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  location = {Ottawa, Canada},
  series = {ICSE '25},
}

Predictive Program Slicing via Execution Knowledge-Guided Dynamic Dependence Learning

Aashish Yadavally, Yi Li, and Tien N. Nguyen

Proc. ACM Soft. Engg., 2024

🏆 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award

Bib PDF

@article{fse24,
  author = {Yadavally, Aashish and Li, Yi and Nguyen, Tien N.},
  title = {Predictive Program Slicing via Execution Knowledge-Guided Dynamic Dependence Learning},
  journal = {Proc. {ACM} Soft. Engg.},
  volume = {1},
  number = {{FSE}},
  pages = {271-292},
  year = {2024},
  note = {ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award},
  award = {true}
}

A Learning-Based Approach to Static Program Slicing

Aashish Yadavally, Yi Li, Shaohua Wang, and Tien N. Nguyen

In , Apr 2024

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{oopsla24,
  author = {Yadavally, Aashish and Li, Yi and Wang, Shaohua and Nguyen, Tien N.},
  title = {A Learning-Based Approach to Static Program Slicing},
  year = {2024},
  issue_date = {April 2024},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  volume = {8},
  number = {OOPSLA1},
  journal = {Proc. ACM Program. Lang.},
  month = apr,
  articleno = {97},
  numpages = {27},
}

Commit-Level, Neural Vulnerability Detection and Assessment

Yi Li, Aashish Yadavally, Jiaxing Zhang, Shaohua Wang, and Tien N. Nguyen

In ESEC/SIGSOFT FSE, Apr 2023

Bib PDF Slides

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/sigsoft/LiYZWN23,
  author = {Li, Yi and Yadavally, Aashish and Zhang, Jiaxing and Wang, Shaohua and Nguyen, Tien N.},
  title = {Commit-Level, Neural Vulnerability Detection and Assessment},
  booktitle = {{ESEC/SIGSOFT} {FSE}},
  pages = {1024--1036},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2023},
}

(Partial) Program Dependence Learning

Aashish Yadavally, Tien N. Nguyen, Wenbo Wang, and Shaohua Wang

In ICSE, Apr 2023

🏆 Nominated for ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award

Bib PDF Slides

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/icse/YadavallyNWW23,
  author = {Yadavally, Aashish and Nguyen, Tien N. and Wang, Wenbo and Wang, Shaohua},
  title = {(Partial) Program Dependence Learning},
  booktitle = {{ICSE}},
  pages = {2501--2513},
  publisher = {{IEEE}},
  year = {2023},
  note = {ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award},
  nomination = {true}
}

DeepVD: Toward Class-Separation Features for Neural Network Vulnerability Detection

Wenbo Wang, Tien N. Nguyen, Shaohua Wang, Yi Li, Jiyuan Zhang, and Aashish Yadavally

In ICSE, Apr 2023

Bib PDF Slides

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/icse/WangNWLZY23,
  author = {Wang, Wenbo and Nguyen, Tien N. and Wang, Shaohua and Li, Yi and Zhang, Jiyuan and Yadavally, Aashish},
  title = {DeepVD: Toward Class-Separation Features for Neural Network Vulnerability
                    Detection},
  booktitle = {{ICSE}},
  pages = {2249--2261},
  publisher = {{IEEE}},
  year = {2023},
}

Phrase2Set: Phrase-to-Set Machine Translation and Its Software Engineering Applications

Thanh V. Nguyen, Aashish Yadavally, and Tien N. Nguyen

In SANER, Apr 2022

🏆 IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Award

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/wcre/NguyenYN22,
  author = {Nguyen, Thanh V. and Yadavally, Aashish and Nguyen, Tien N.},
  title = {Phrase2Set: Phrase-to-Set Machine Translation and Its Software Engineering
                    Applications},
  booktitle = {{SANER}},
  pages = {502--513},
  publisher = {{IEEE}},
  year = {2022},
  note = {IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Award},
  award = {true}
}