I am Mingfei Cheng (程明飞), a fourth-year PhD candidate at Singapore Management University (SMU, 2022-Current), supervised by Prof. Xiaofei Xie. In 2025, I am visting the Nanda Lab at the University of Ottawa, working under the guidance of Prof. Lionel Briand. Prior to my PhD, I obtained my M.S. and B.S. degrees from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), under the advisement of Prof. Kaili Zhao, Prof. Yajing Xu and Prof. Jun Guo.
My research focuses on software testing and AI-enabled systems, including autonomous driving systems (ADSs) and cyber-physical systems (CPSs). I am also extending my efforts toward LLM-enabled systems and Code Repair. I welcome opportunities for connection and collaboration.
🔥 News
- 2025.12: 🎉🎉 One paper are accepted by ICSE 2026!
- 2025.04: 🎉🎉 Two papers are accepted by FSE 2025!
- 2024.12: 🎉🎉 One paper is accepted by ISSTA 2025 (direct acceptance rate 4%)!
- 2024.12: 🎉🎉 Two papers are accepted by ICSE 2025 workshops (SE4ADS and APR)!
- 2024.11: 🎉🎉 One paper is accepted by ICSE 2025!
📖 Selected Publications (Full List)
Decictor: Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Decision-Making in Autonomous Driving Systems
Mingfei Cheng, Xiaofei Xie, Yuan Zhou, Junjie Wang, Guozhu Meng, Kairui Yang
ICSE 2025, Research Track, Pre-print, Code will be released soon
This paper is the first to evaluate the robustness of decision optimality in Autonomous Driving Systems.
MoDitector: Module-Directed Testing for Autonomous Driving Systems
Renzhi Wang$^*$, Mingfei Cheng$^*$, Xiaofei Xie, Yuan Zhou, Lei Ma
ISSTA 2025, Research Track, Pre-print and Code will be released soon
This paper is the first to evaluate individual modules from a system-level perspective. Our method can effectively identify system-level issues root-caused by a specific module.
BehAVExplor: Behavior Diversity Guided Testing for Autonomous Driving Systems
Mingfei Cheng, Yuan Zhou, Xiaofei Xie
ISSTA 2023, Technical Track, Paper, Project Code
This paper is the first to leverage ego behavior as feedback to enhance the diversity of generated scenarios in ADS testing, thereby uncovering diverse intrinsic weaknesses within the ADS.
Joint Topology-preserving and Feature-refinement Network for Curvilinear Structure Segmentation
Mingfei Cheng, Kaili Zhao, Xuhong Guom, Yajing Xu, Jun Guo
ICCV 2021, Main Conference, Paper, Project Code
This paper proposes a novel framework to jointly optimize topology preservation and pixel-level performance for curvilinear structure segmentation.
🎯 Leading Projects (Full List)
I have developed several tools for ADS testing. All leading projects were independently developed by me and may not be absolutely perfect. I warmly welcome anyone interested in helping to maintain and improve these projects.
- Drivora (Github Link)
I designed and implemented a unified testing platform for Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS) testing based on Carla, which integrates my previous projects. This platform aims to provide various testing techniques (e.g., AVFuzzer) for quick adoption in research. This is a long-term, ongoing project, I welcome anyone interested to join and engage in discussions. - ApolloSimFuzz (Github Link) I developed a simple, research-driven simulation environment for testing the decision-making components of Baidu Apollo, including Prediction, Planning, Routing, and Control. This platform does not require a graphics rendering engine, making it easy to use on Linux servers without a GUI.
🏆 Awards
- 2025 ICSE 2026 Shadow PC Distinguished Reviewer
- 2025 SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship
- 2025 ACM SIGSOFT CAPS Travel Funds.
- 2023 ACM SIGSOFT CAPS Travel Funds.
- 2023 The 3rd Place Winner in WSDM Ideation Challenge.
- 2019 Outstanding Graduates in Beijing.
- 2016-2018 The First Level Presidential Scholarship from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
📝 Services
Conference
- PC member of ASE 2026, Research Track
- PC member of ISSTA 2026, Research Track
- PC member of ICSME 2026, Visions and Emerging Results Track-track
- PC member of SE4ADS (Workshop), 2025-2026
- PC member of SSBSE 2025, RENE/NIER Track
- Junior PC member of MSR 2024 & 2025, Technical Track
- PC member of ISSTA 2024 & 2025, Artifact Evaluation
- PC member of ICSE 2025 & 2026, Artifact Evaluation
- PC member of USENIX Security 2024 & 2025, Artifact Evaluation
- Reviewer of ACCV 2022 and ECCV 2022
Journal
- IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
- Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
- Journal of Software: Evolution and Process
- IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (TITS)
- Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
- IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (TMI)
- Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
- IEEE Internet of Things Journal
- Neurocomputing
💻 Internships
- 2025.08 - 2025.12, University of Ottawa, Visiting Researcher, Ottawa, Canada
- 2021.07 - 2022.01, Alibaba Cloud, Computer Vision Algorithm Intern, Hangzhou & Beijing, China.
- 2021.04 - 2021.07, Beijing Research Institute of China Telecom, Computer Vision Algorithm Intern, Beijing, China.