Academic Qualification
Ph.D. in Computer Science, The University of Texas at Arlington
M.S. in Software Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington
B.S. in Computer Science, Jilin University
Teaching Area
EIE 331 - Embedded Systems Design (Undergraduate; Fall 2024, Fall 2025, Fall 2026)
CS/EIE/SE 471 - Computer and Network Security (Undergraduate; Spring 2025, Spring 2026)
SE 252 - Software Project Management (Undergraduate; Spring 2025, Spring 2026)
MIIE01 - Advanced Topics in Information Technology (Master's; Fall 2025, Fall 2026)
DNCZ04 - Cybersecurity (Doctoral; Spring 2025, Spring 2026)
Research Area
Agentic Systems for Software Security: autonomous AI agents for vulnerability discovery, program testing, exploit generation, and automated hardening and patching.
Language-Based Security and Formal Methods: program analysis, type systems, verification, and formal methods for secure software.
Trustworthy Foundation Models: security, privacy, robustness, alignment, red teaming, and defense for large language and multimodal models.
AI for Program and Binary Understanding: machine learning for code comprehension, binary analysis, reverse engineering, and decompilation.
Embodied AI and Safe Autonomy: safe motion planning, adaptive control, and learning-based decision-making in uncertain environments.
AI Safety and Human-AI Collaboration: evaluation, monitoring, and safe collaboration with increasingly autonomous AI systems.
Professional Services
Institutional Service
Vice Chair, IEEE Computer Society Macau Chapter (2025-Present)
Secretary, Research Committee, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology (2024-Present)
Conference Organization
Associate Program Chair, Experience Reports and Tools Track, ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2027
Panel Chair, CCF International Conference on Service Science (ICSS 2026)
Local Co-Chair, IEEE Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2025)
Program Committees and Community Service
International Conference on Advanced Security on Software and Systems (2025)
International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2026)
Hackathon Judge, Major League Hacking AI Hackfest (April 2026-Present)
Journal and Conference Reviewing
Journals:
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
Advanced Intelligent Systems
Computers and Electrical Engineering
Computers & Security
Computer Networks
Empirical Software Engineering
IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
IEEE Transactions on Reliability
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Journal of Computer Languages
Journal of Systems and Software
Conferences:
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (2019-2020)
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (2020)
International Conference on Information and Communications Security (2019-2021)
USENIX Security Symposium (2021-2022, 2024)
Working Experience
Sept. 2024 ~ present, Assistant Professor, Macau University of Science and Technology (September 2024-Present)
Sept. 2017 ~ Aug 2023, Graduate Research and Teaching Experience, The University of Texas at Arlington (September 2017-August 2023)
Academic Publication (selected)
1. RobustFuzz: A Semantic Disturbance Benchmark for Learned Policies in Embodied Control
Xiaolei Ren
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2026. (CSRankings; top-tier robotics conference)
2. Revisiting Optimization-Resilience Claims in Binary Diffing Tools: Insights from LLVM Peephole Optimization Analysis
Xiaolei Ren, Mengfei Ren, Yu Lei, and Jiang Ming
ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), Trondheim, Norway, 2025. (CCF-A; top-tier conference)
3. Security Analysis of Zigbee Protocol Implementation via Device-Agnostic Fuzzing
Mengfei Ren, Xiaolei Ren, Huadong Feng, Jiang Ming, and Yu Lei
ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice, 2023. (JCR Q1)
4. Intelligent Zigbee Protocol Fuzzing via Constraint-Field Dependency Inference
Meng Ren, Haotian Zhang, Xiaolei Ren, Jiang Ming, and Yu Lei
European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS), The Hague, Netherlands, 2023. (CCF-B)
5. MagicMirror: Towards High-Coverage Fuzzing of Smart Contracts
Huadong Feng, Xiaolei Ren, Qiping Wei, Yu Lei, Raghu Kacker, Richard Kuhn, and Dimitris Simos
IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), Dublin, Ireland, 2023.
6. Motion Planning and Cooperative Manipulation for Mobile Robots with Dual Arms
Fuchun Sun, Yang Chen, Yangyang Wu, Linxiang Li, and Xiaolei Ren
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2022. (JCR Q1)
7. Unleashing the Hidden Power of Compiler Optimization on Binary Code Difference
Xiaolei Ren, Michael Ho, Jiang Ming, Yu Lei, and Li Li
ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2021. (CCF-A; top-tier conference)
8. Z-Fuzzer: Device-Agnostic Fuzzing of Zigbee Protocol Implementation
Mengfei Ren, Xiaolei Ren, Huadong Feng, Jiang Ming, and Yu Lei
ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), 2021.
Discovered CVE-2020-27890, CVE-2020-27891, CVE-2020-27892.
Research Grants
2025-2027 Compiler Optimization and Binary Code Security: Impact Analysis and Intelligent Platform Development (FDCT)
2025-2027 Runtime Efficiency and Code Security: Quality Evaluation and Optimization Strategies for AI-Generated Code (FDCT)
Professional Certification and Awards
ICM 2026 Honorable Mention — Faculty Advisor to Yanqing Zhao and Jiehao Li
Professional Society Membership
Member, CCF/ACM/IEEE
