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Zhi Chen (陈智)
PhD Student in Computer Science at Singapore Management University (SMU), focusing on AI-driven software engineering.
I am with the Centre for Research on Intelligent Software Engineering (RISE), advised by Professor Lingxiao Jiang. My research focuses on software development agents in real-world settings: understanding their behavior, evaluating them systematically, and improving their capability in practical software development lifecycle.
Research
Current Focus
Code Agent for Practical Software Engineering
Designing strategies that make code agents more useful for developers in industrial settings, balancing effectiveness, memorization risk, and trustworthiness.
Code Agent Evaluation in Real-World Repositories
Building realistic benchmarks and analysis methods to measure patch quality, process behavior, and issue-level performance in real-world repositories.
Code Agent Failure Analysis and Robustness
Studying where and why code-agent workflows fail beyond final code outputs, with process-oriented diagnostics to improve reliability.
Publications
Selected Papers
Beyond Final Code: A Process-Oriented Error Analysis of Software Development Agents in Real-World GitHub Scenarios
Zhi Chen, Wei Ma, Lingxiao Jiang
The 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Promise and Peril of Collaborative Code Generation Models: Balancing Effectiveness and Memorization
Zhi Chen, Lingxiao Jiang
The 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2024), Sacramento, USA.
Evaluating Software Development Agents: Patch Patterns, Code Quality, and Issue Complexity in Real-World GitHub Scenarios
Zhi Chen, Lingxiao Jiang
The 32nd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2025), Montreal, Canada.
AgentGuard: An Active Threat Discovery System for Package Confusion Using Multi-Agent Collaboration
Wei Ma, Yu Li, Zhi Chen, Ye Liu, Lingxiao Jiang, Qiang Hu, Junyi Tao
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Machine Learning for Cyber Security (ML4CS 2025), Hangzhou, China.
Rethinking the Value of Agent-Generated Tests for LLM-Based Software Engineering Agents
Zhi Chen, Zhensu Sun, Yuling Shi, Chao Peng, Xiaodong Gu, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang
arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.07900.
Reinforcement Learning Foundations for Deep Research Systems: A Survey
Wenjun Li, Zhi Chen, Jingru Lin, Hannan Cao, Wei Han, Sheng Liang, Zhi Zhang, Kuicai Dong, Dexun Li, Chen Zhang, Yong Liu
arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.06733.
Experience
Professional Experience
Dec. 2025 - Present
TikTok AI Innovation Center
R&D Intern | Project: Code Agent
Apr. 2025 - Aug. 2025
Noah's Ark Lab
Research Intern | Project: Deep Research Agent
Aug. 2022 - Jul. 2023
Sea Labs
Engineer
Aug. 2020 - Jul. 2021
Baosight Software Co., Ltd.
Software Engineer, Cloud Application Department
Oct. 2019 - Feb. 2020
Lenovo Group, LCFC Electronics Technology Co., Ltd.
Software Engineer Intern, R&D Department
Education
Academic Background
Singapore Management University
PhD in Computer Science, School of Computing and Information Systems
Singapore Management University
MSc in Computing, School of Computing and Information Systems
Hefei University of Technology
BE in Software Engineering, School of Software
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
Exchange Student, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
Recognition
Awards
SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship
Singapore Management University | Aug. 2025
SMU Research Scholarship
Singapore Management University | Aug. 2023
Merit Award
Singapore Management University | Dec. 2021
Golden Prize in Fifth Internet Innovation Competition
Hefei University of Technology | Aug. 2018
Second-Class Merit-Based Scholarship
Hefei University of Technology | Sep. 2017
Contact
Open for Collaboration
I am open to collaborations focused on code agents, especially on evaluation and enhancing the capability of code agents in real-world software development tasks.