Xudong Sun

xudongs3@illinois.edu
Google Scholar | DBLP | GitHub | LinkedIn

I'm an incoming assistant professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Toronto starting in Fall 2026. I'm currently spending my gap year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoc working with Tej Chajed. I received my PhD from the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where I spent six wonderful years advised by Tianyin Xu. I work on computer systems and my research focuses on system reliability. I got my bachelor degree from Nanjing University in 2019.

I have interned at VMware Research (2020, 2022) mentored by Lalith Suresh and Microsoft Research (2021) mentored by Suman Nath.

My group at the University of Toronto ECE is actively looking for PhD and master's students in Fall 2026.

Research

The goal of my research is to make computer systems reliable. Even critical computer systems have bugs, and the bugs come with serious consequences, e.g., outage of your favorite app, loss of your personal data. My research is about making sure such bugs never happen (again)!

My research is in the intersection of computer systems, formal methods, and software testing. I build (1) testing techniques to detect the presence of bugs in real-world systems and develop a deep understanding of them, and (2) formal verification techniques to rigorously guarantee the absence of bugs in real-world system.

As a system researcher, I care about real-world systems that support everyone's daily life, and developers who struggle with bugs and failures of these systems. My PhD research has improved the reliability of many critical distributed and operating systems. Recently, I'm interested in formally verifying real-world cloud systems, e.g., Kubernetes.

Systems research should be relevant, practical and beautiful. That's what I always aim for.

Prospective Students: I'm looking for Fall'26 PhD/MS students with strong backgrounds in systems, formal methods, or testing. Send me an email with your CV if you are interested in working with me.

Publications

Service

• EuroSys 2026 Program committee
• ASE 2025 Program committee
• OSDI/ATC 2024 Reproducibility Birds-of-a-Feather Session presenter
• ATC 2024 external review committee

Teaching

• Teaching assistant of UIUC CS523: Advanced Operating Systems, 2020 Fall

Mentoring

• Cody Rivera (2024), UIUC PhD student → University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD)
• Cathy Cai (2024), UIUC PhD student
• Shurang Wu (2024), undergrad student visiting UIUC → University of Texas Austin (PhD)
• Wenjie Ma (2023), Nanjing University undergrad → University of California Berkeley (PhD)
• Zicheng Ma (2023), UIUC undergrad → Harvard University (MS)
• Yinfang Chen (2021 - 2022), UIUC PhD student
• Tyler Gu (2021 - 2022), UIUC PhD student
• Wenqing Luo (2021 - 2022), UIUC MS → Apple (Cloud Infra)
• Lilia Tang (2020 - 2021), UIUC PhD student

Honors & Awards

• Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award at OSDI 2024
• Mavis Future Faculty Fellows 2024
• Yunni & Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship 2022

How to pronounce my name

• Xudong
• Sun
• Fun fact: my first name, Xudong, in Chinese means "Sun rises in the east," while my last name, Sun, in Chinese means "grandchildren, or descendants."