Xulu Chu

Hi there! I am a Master’s student(2024/04-2026/04) in Computer Science at DePaul University, working with Professor Tanu Malik at the DICE Lab.

My research focuses on Program Analysis, Data Provenance, and Web Security. Specifically, I want to solve web security issues through both static and dynamic program analysis methods.

Before DePaul, I worked as a Software Engineer at ByteDance and iFlyTek for 5 years, where I gained valuable industry experience in web development and systems.

I am planning to apply for PhD programs in Computer Science 2026 Fall. You can find my CV here and reach me at chuxulu.volary@gmail.com.

In my free time, I enjoy running🏃‍♀️.

Experience

Research Assistant, DePaul University (2024 Apr. - Present)
Advisor: Prof. Tanu Malik

Senior Software Engineer, ByteDance (2020 Dec. - 2023 Dec.)

Software Engineer, iFlyTek (2019 Jun. - 2020 Nov.)

Publication

SSDBM
Accurate Differential Analysis using Record and Selective Replay

Yuta Nakamura, Xulu Chu, Tanu Malik, and 1 more author

International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM), 2025

Abs Bib

To verify the reproducibility of an application, it is often necessary to execute it multiple times, each time with a different input, and evaluate whether the application outcome changes. Given the complexity of the software, any unexpected behavior in the outcome requires quick insight into application behavior. Efficient execution tracing is instrumental but traces must often be compared to attain that insight. Comparing execution traces is a significant challenge, especially for parallel MPI applications as tasks may exchange messages in a non-deterministic order. Our results demonstrate that, without selective replay, multiple sources of non-determinism lead to numerous false positives in comparing two runs. Through selective replay, we uncover and explain all divergences and convergences, achieving a reduction in false positives by more than 50%.
@article{lu2025accurate, title = {Accurate Differential Analysis using Record and Selective Replay}, author = {Nakamura, Yuta and Chu, Xulu and Malik, Tanu and Laguna, Ignacio}, journal = {International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM)}, year = {2025}, }

I'm contributing to novel methods for program analysis and debugging. I've worked on the Minimum Path Recovery Set (mPRS) algorithm that significantly reduces instrumentation overhead while maintaining full execution path recovery.

I'm also a co-author on "Accurate Differential Analysis using Record and Selective Replay" (SSDBM 2025), where we developed techniques to improve divergence-localization in distributed systems by 30%.