Guest Talk by Dr. James Xi Zheng

29 July 2025

Photo: UHH Knowledge Technology

On July 15, our group hosted a guest talk by Dr. James Xi Zheng from Macquarie University, Australia. Below is an abstract of his talk:

Learning-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems (LE-CPS), such as autonomous vehicles and drones, face critical safety and reliability challenges due to the stochastic nature of deep neural networks. In our FSE’22 and TSE’23 studies, we conducted an in-depth investigation into industry testing practices, uncovering significant gaps between current testing techniques and the needs for regulatory assurance. To address these challenges, we introduced two pioneering approaches: test reduction for ROS-based multi-module autonomous driving systems, and scenario-based construction for checking traffic rule compliance in autonomous driving systems.

This talk will then present our recent progress in bridging probabilistic testing with formal reasoning. I will first cover our FSE’24 work on reviving model-based testing with Large Language Models (LLMs), followed by TSE’24 and ICSE’25 efforts on LLM-driven scenario generation and online testing for uncrewed drone autolanding. Finally, I will introduce our FSE’25 paper NeuroStrata, which leads a neurosymbolic shift from black-box machine learning to white-box, human-understandable reasoning, aiming to improve interpretability, testability, and certification of AI components in safety-critical CPS.

Here is a short bio of Dr. James Xi Zheng:

A/Prof. Xi Zheng earned his Ph.D. in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. He is awarded Australian Research Council Future Fellow in 2024. Between 2005 and 2012, he was the Chief Solution Architect for Menulog Australia. Currently, he occupies several leadership roles at Macquarie University, Australia: Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Group (ITSEG.ORG), Director of International Engagement in the School of Computing, Associate Professor and Deputy Program Leader in Software Engineering. His research areas include Cyber-Physical Systems Testing and Verification, Safety Analysis, Distributed Learning, Internet of Things, and the broader spectrum of Software Engineering.

We thank Dr. Zheng for his visit and insightful talk.