Tao ZhangView profile
Professor
Dr. Tao Zhang is a Full Professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), Macau SAR. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), IEEE Transactions on Reliability (TRel), and the Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), and is an Editorial Board Member for Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) and Science of Computer Programming (SCP). His educational background includes: Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Seoul B.S. in Automation and M.Eng in Software Engineering from Northeastern University, China Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University Dr. Zhang's research primarily focuses on three interconnected areas that represent the cutting edge of modern software engineering: AI for Software Engineering : Utilizing neural language models and large language models to create automated software engineering tools that help developers produce high-quality software. His work includes evaluating whether pretrained language models truly understand software engineering tasks and developing universal representations for bug reports. Software Security : Employing static analysis, AI technologies, and formal methods to detect malware, vulnerabilities, and privacy leaks in mobile apps and smart contracts. His research spans Android malware detection, smart contract vulnerability analysis, and state manipulation attacks in blockchain systems. Mining Software Repositories : Applying information retrieval and machine learning to extract meaningful insights from software artifacts to improve development efficiency. This includes work on app review analysis, change request localization, and code similarity metrics. His publications demonstrate significant impact across the software engineering community, with over 100 high-quality papers in top venues including ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ASE, TSE, TOSEM, EMSE, JSS, TIFS, and TDSC. Dr. Zhang has received numerous honors and recognitions: Distinguished Member, China Computer Federation (CCF), September 2025 Top Reviewer Award 2023, Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), April 2024 Distinguished Reviewer in 2023, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), February 2024 Senior Member of ACM (October 2020) and IEEE (February 2020) Best Paper Award, 16th Korea Conference on Software Engineering (KCSE), February 2014 As an academic leader, Dr. Zhang serves/served as General or Program Chair for numerous conferences including APSEC 2025, Internetware 2024, SANER 2023, and DSA 2021. He mentors a vibrant research group with multiple postdocs, PhD students, and master's students working on innovative projects in intelligent software engineering and security. His lab actively recruits highly motivated students interested in Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, Software Security, and Software Engineering. Dr. Zhang leads the "Intelligent Software Data Analysis and Software Security" research team at MUST, which focuses on leveraging AI technologies to solve critical challenges in software development and security. The team maintains strong collaborations with international researchers and regularly publishes in top-tier venues.












