Zheng Guo

email: zhgguo@umich.edu

I am a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, hosted by the Michigan Institute for Data & AI in Society (MIDAS). I work with Professor Xinyu Wang, Professor Alex Gorodetsky, and Professor Brian Kiedrowski. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego under the supervision of Professor Nadia Polikarpova, and my bachelor’s degree in software engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

My research focuses on accelerating computational science — building tools that let scientists express, discover, and optimize the programs behind their experiments. As part of the broader AI for science effort, I combine program synthesis, program optimization, and deep learning to automate the tedious and error-prone parts of scientific software, so researchers can move from idea to result faster and with more confidence.

Research interests: program synthesis, program optimization, tensor network methods, kernel optimization, AI for science

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Projects

active

Tensor Network Methods for Computational Science

Tensor networks compress high-dimensional data in computational science, but their power hinges on choosing a good structure. I develop methods that automatically search for compact, accurate tensor structures, which scales scientific simulations such as radiation transport and neutron diffusion far beyond prior work.

Relevant publications: JCP 2026arXiv 2025

Scaling Up Program Synthesis

Program synthesis lets scientists say what to compute and leave the how to the machine, but it must scale to be useful. I make search practical with compact representations of enormous, entangled program spaces and precomputed abstract semantics that prune wrong programs fast.

Relevant publications: PLDI 2026ICFP 2022

Type-Directed Program Synthesis for APIs

Composing functions across large libraries and web APIs is hard. I synthesize such code from type signatures by casting it as proof search, using type-guided abstraction refinement to search soundly and efficiently across Haskell libraries (Hoogle+) and RESTful APIs. Ongoing work extends type-directed synthesis to scientific workflow synthesis, integration with LLMs, and automated proof generation for software verification.

Relevant publications: PLDI 2022OOPSLA 2020POPL 2019

Publications

  1. JCP
    Hierarchical search of tree tensor networks for high-dimensional data
    Zheng Guo, Aditya Deshpande, Xinyu Wang, Brian C. Kiedrowski, and Alex A. Gorodetsky
    Journal of Computational Physics, 2026
  2. PLDI
    Presynthesis: Towards Scaling Up Program Synthesis with Finer-Grained Abstract Semantics
    Rui Dong, Qingyue Wu, Danny Ding, Zheng Guo, Ruyi Ji, and Xinyu Wang
    Proc. ACM Program. Lang., 2026
  3. arXiv
    Tensor Network Structure Search Via Canonical Dimension Tree Enumeration
    Zheng Guo, Aditya Deshpande, Brian Kiedrowski, Xinyu Wang, and Alex Gorodetsky
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.02711, 2025
  4. ICFP
    Searching Entangled Program Spaces
    James Koppel, Zheng Guo, Edsko Vries, Armando Solar-Lezama, and Nadia Polikarpova
    Proc. ACM Program. Lang., Aug 2022
  5. PLDI
    Type-Directed Program Synthesis for RESTful APIs
    Zheng Guo, David Cao, Davin Tjong, Jean Yang, Cole Schlesinger, and Nadia Polikarpova
    In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation , San Diego, CA, USA, Aug 2022
  6. OOPSLA
    Digging for Fold: Synthesis-Aided API Discovery for Haskell
    Michael B. James, Zheng Guo, Ziteng Wang, Shivani Doshi, Hila Peleg, Ranjit Jhala, and Nadia Polikarpova
    Proc. ACM Program. Lang., Nov 2020
  7. POPL
    Program Synthesis by Type-Guided Abstraction Refinement
    Zheng Guo, Michael James, David Justo, Jiaxiao Zhou, Ziteng Wang, Ranjit Jhala, and Nadia Polikarpova
    Proc. ACM Program. Lang., Dec 2019

Talks

  • APIphany: Type-Directed Program Synthesis for RESTful APIs (PLDI'22, San Diego, USA)
  • Hoogle+: Program Synthesis by Type-Guided Abstraction Refinement (POPL'20, New Orleans, USA)

Teaching

  • EECS 498: Software Engineering (undergrad), co-instructor @ WI'26
  • AI for Scientists and Engineers Summer Academy, instructor @ 2025, 2026
  • CSE 130: Programming Language (undergrad), teaching assistant @ SP'20, SP'21, FA'21, SP'23
  • CSE 291: Program Synthesis (graduate), teaching assistant @ WI'21
  • CSE 231: Advanced Compilers (graduate), teaching assistant @ WI'19
  • COGS 18: Introduction to Python (undergrad), teaching assistant @ Summer'19
  • CSE 230: Programming Languages (graduate), teaching assistant @ FA'18

Service

  • 2022 Artifact Evaluation Committee of POPL, PLDI
  • 2021 Artifact Evaluation Committee of ICFP, PLDI, CAV
  • 2020 Artifact Evaluation Committee of ICFP, ECOOP