Liyi Li

I am an assistant professor in the CS department. I earned my PhD at the University of Illinois under the supervision of Elsa Gunter, with the topic of compiler verification, which connects the fields of compilers, programming languages, and formal methods. Mainly, we intend to develop trustworthy software using the compiler field. The experience fixes my “research personality”, in the sense that my main research focus is to “compile” a hard problem to a solution to a similar problem in another field. After graduation, I had a postdoc experience at the University of Maryland, where I practiced my research personality to work in quantum computing. Mainly, I utilized compiler and verification techniques to optimize, analyze, and verify quantum programs. Another branch of my work is to continue my work with compiler verification by developing memory-safe compilers, such as the Checked-C work, a memory-safe dialect of C. After I joined Iowa State University, I expanded my domain knowledge to border software engineering techniques. I tried to utilize different software engineering tools, such as genetic algorithms and probabilistic model-checking techniques, to help analyze program properties and improve program performance.

Research Interests: Formal methods; programming languages; software engineering; quantum computing; mathematical semantics of programming languages; formal reasoning about human-computer systems; formal reasoning about security; proof theory and type theory; programming languages for quantum computing; formal and practical verification tools for languages including quantum language; methodology transformation for building trustworthy software development