Xingyu Xie (namasikanam)

Max-Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP)
Foundations of Security and Privacy Group
MB5-193, Universitaetsstraße 140
Bochum, Germany
Email:
About Me

I am a PhD student at MPI-SP, fortunately supervised by Prof. Gilles Barthe. I'm interested in formal verification, especially its application to security, and, of course, like everyone nowadays, its interplay with machine learning.

I received my bachelor’s degree in 2021 and my master’s degree in 2024 from Tsinghua University. During the time, I did internships at Megvii and RealAI, and involved in Closed Social.

I was a competitive programmer during 2011-2021, winning several gold medals including NOI 2016. I was also involved in the organization of several programming competitions, including THUPC 2019-2021.

I am cynical. I co-organized a satirical public activity, Huatsing Special Ordinary Scholarship (华清大学特普通奖学金) in 2020-2021. We're mocking Special Scholarship (for the top-10 students) in Tsinghua University. Why don't ordinary students deserve to be awarded? I plan to re-set-up our official website, but I am very lazy, so for the moment, if you are interested, you can search in Chinese.

I am nerdy, honestly nerdier than ChatGPT. I am learning how to interact with people, learning the relationships, and learning to understand and take care of the emotion of myself and others. I hope one day I will have the courage and ability to interact with the world by an authentic self.

Publications

Statistics: Google Scholar.

Besides the publication lists, I also list the uneasy stories behind my papers. The reason is that, I dislike the success narratives, while I understand the cruelty of this competitive world.
reject · major revision · minor revision · accept

2026

  • (Dis) Proving Spectre Security with Speculation-Passing Style. [paper]
    Santiago Arranz-Olmos, Gilles Barthe, Lionel Blatter, Xingyu Xie, Zhiyuan Zhang. (alphabetical order)
  • Modular Verification of Probabilistic Constant-Time. PriSC 2026.
    Xingyu Xie

2024

  • GAuV: A Graph-based Automated Verification Framework for Perfect Semi-honest Security of Multiparty Computation Protocols. SP 2024. [paper] [slides] [talk] [code]
    Xingyu Xie*, Yifei Li*, Wei Zhang, Tuowei Wang, Shizhen Xu, Jun Zhu, Yifan Song. (* co-first-author)
    Submissions: SP 2023 → SP 2024

2023

  • On Lightweight Hoare Logic of Probabilistic Programs: A Bound Tighter than the Union Bound. PLDI SRC 2023. [poster]
    Xingyu Xie

2022

  • Mastery: Shifted-code-aware Structured Merging. SETTA 2022 (Awarded Best Paper, Invited to JSA). [paper] [slides] [talk] [code]
    Fengmin Zhu*, Xingyu Xie*, Dongyu Feng, Na Meng, Fei He. (* co-first-author)
    Submissions: OOPSLA 2020 → ICSE 2021 → FSE 2021 → ICSE 2022 → SETTA 2022 → JSA → JSA → JSA
Teaching

I served as teaching assistants for the following courses at Tsinghua University:

  • Software Analysis and Verification
    Spring 2021-2023 · Lab: CMinor-Verifier (in Chinese)
  • Principles and Practice of Compiler Construction
    Fall 2020-2021 · Lab: MiniDecaf (in Chinese)
  • Data Structure and Algorithms
    Fall 2020

I like teaching, for the love of knowledge and the empathy with students. I am lucky to be with a group of friends who are enthusiastic about teaching. Nevertheless, I feel a bit disillusioned about the meaning of teaching in the age of LLM, and a bit confused about the meaning of learning at the same time.

Blog

I really hope one day I will not be so lazy and write some blogs. Here are my high school blog for competitive programming and Zhihu articles in Chinese.

2025