Muhammad Ali Gulzar
Assistant Professor in Computer Science

I am an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020. I was also the recipient of Google Ph.D. Fellowship 2017-20.
The vision of my research is to build systems that improve developer productivity through automated debugging and testing for big data analytics. Broadly, I am interested in designing novel tool support for data-centric software development. My approach combines insights from software engineering, distributed systems, and databases. My past work has focused on interactive and automated debugging for Apache Spark, symbolic execution based test generation for dataflow programs, and performance debugging in Apache Spark.
Awards
Publications
2020
2019
2018
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[ESEC/FSE Demo 2018] BigSift: Automated Debugging of Big Data Analytics in Data-intensive Scalable ComputingIn Proceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering 20184 Pages. Demonstration Paper. 38.8% Acceptance Rate
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[ICSE ACM Student Research Competition 2018] Interactive and Automated Debugging for Big Data Analytics ( ACM Student Research Competition Gold Medal Winner)In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceeedings 20183 Pages. Short Paper.
2017
2016
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[VLDB 2016] Titian: Data Provenance Support in Spark ( The "Best of VLDB" Paper)Proc. VLDB Endow. 201612 Pages. Full Paper. 21.2% Acceptance Rate
2015
Updates
Aug 9, 2020 | I joined the computer science department at Virginia Tech as an assistant professor. |
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Aug 8, 2020 | Our work on influence-based data prpovenance is accepted to SoCC 2020. Congrats Jason! |
Aug 4, 2020 | Our work on fuzz testing for data analytics is accepted to ASE 2020. Congrats Qian! |
May 31, 2020 | I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA. Ph.D. Dissertation. |
May 31, 2020 | I am honored to receive the 2019-20 Outstanding Computer Science Graduating Ph.D. Student from the computer science department at UCLA. |
May 31, 2020 | I am honored to receive the 2019-20 Northrop Grumman Outstanding Computer Science Graduate Student Research Award from the computer science department at UCLA. |
May 31, 2020 | Our work on evaluating neuron coverage as a testing criterion for DNNs is accepted to FSE 2020. Congrats Fabrice! |
Jan 31, 2020 | Our demonstration paper on test generation for big data analytics is accepted to ICSE DEMO 2020. |
Dec 31, 2019 | Our work on code refactoring for FPGA is accepted to ICSE 2020. Congrats Jason, Aish, and Qian! |
Jul 23, 2019 | Our work on performance debugging of dataflow applications is accepted to SoCC 2019. Congrats Jason! |
Apr 9, 2019 | Our work on symbolic-execution based testing of big data analytics is accepted to ESEC/FSE 2019. |
Dec 9, 2018 | Our paper on practices of Differential Testing at Google got accpeted to ICSE SEIP 2019. I contributed towards this work as an intern at Google in 2018. |
Sep 30, 2018 | My work on a real time log analysis framework at NEC Labs America got accepted to ICDCS 2018. |
Sep 30, 2018 | We are awarded $50K NSF I-Corps grant for technology transfer of our interactive and automated debugging work. I am the EL (Entrepreneurial Lead) of this grant. |
Jun 20, 2018 | I started working at Google Inc. Mountain View as Software Engineer Tools and Infrastructure Intern. |
May 31, 2018 | Miryung and I demonstrated our tool BigSift at Spark Summit 2018. |
May 26, 2018 | I received a gold medal at ACM Student Research Competition at ICSE 2018 |
Jun 5, 2017 | Our work on automated debugging in DISC is accepted to SoCC 2017. |
Mar 31, 2017 | I am honored to be awarded the 2017 Google Ph.D Fellowship in Software Engineering. Thanks Google! |
Dec 31, 2016 | Our work on automated and interactive debugging in Spark is accepted at SIGMOD 2017 demonstration track |
Jun 30, 2016 | Our work, BigDebug, for interactive debugging of big data applications is accepted at FSE 2016 demonstration track |
Jun 20, 2016 | I started working as a Summer Research Assistant at NEC Labs America, Princeton in summer 2016 |
Apr 30, 2016 | Our workshop paper on automated fault localization and debugging in big data applications is accepted to HotCloud 2016 |
Nov 30, 2015 | Our paper on debugging primitives for interactive big data processing is accepted to ICSE 2016 |
Jun 6, 2015 | Our paper on Apache Spark’s Data Provenance is accepted to VLDB 2016 |