Gogul Balakrishnan

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Research

My research interests broadly span programming languages and compilers. Specifically, I am interested in program analysis, verification, and testing problems that improve the productivity of programmers.

My recent focus has been on tools for analyzing and testing C/C++ programs. Specifically, I worked on an automated test-case generation tool for C/C++ programs, and a source-to-source translation tool that models inheritance and exceptions in such a way that makes it easier to statically analyze C++ programs.
Quite recently, I have been involved in building a framework for testing large-scale distributed systems such as Hadoop, Hbase, and so on.
For my Ph.D. dissertation, I developed static-analysis algorithms to address the problem of analyzing executables without debugging information.
Whenever I find time, I work on some fun projects on the side.

Doctoral Thesis

G. Balakrishnan, WYSINWYX: What You See Is Not What You eXecute, Ph.D. dissertation and Tech. Rep. TR-1603, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, August, 2007.

Journal Publications

G. Balakrishnan and T. W. Reps, WYSINWYX: What you see is not what you eXecute, In ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 32, Nr 6, August, 2010. [Journal version of my thesis]

2020

A. Kanade, P. Maniatis, G. Balakrishnan, and K. Shi, Pre-trained Contextual Embedding of Source Code, In Intl. Conf. on Machine Learning (ICML), 2020.

2013

P. Garg, F. Ivancic, G. Balakrishnan, N. Maeda, and A. Gupta, Feedback-Directed Unit Test Generation for C/C++ using Concolic Execution, In Intl. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2013.

2012

J. Yang, G. Balakrishnan, N. Maeda, F. Ivancic, A. Gupta, N. Sinha, S. Sankaranarayanan, and N. Sharma, Object Model Construction for Inheritance in C++ and Its Applications to Program Analysis, In Intl. Conf. on Compiler Construction (CC), 2012.
K. Ghorbal, F. Ivancic, G. Balakrishnan, N. Maeda, and A. Gupta, Donut Domains: Efficient Non-convex Domains for Abstract Interpretation, In Intl. Conf. on Verification Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI), 2012.

2011

P. Prabhu, N. Maeda, G. Balakrishnan, F. Ivancic, and A. Gupta, Interprocedural Exception Analysis for C++, In European Conf. on Object Oriented Programming (ECOOP), 2011.
G. Balakrishnan, N. Maeda, S. Sankaranarayanan, F. Ivancic, A. Gupta, and R. Pothengil, Modeling and Analyzing the Interaction of C and C++ Strings, In FoVeOOS, 2011.
F. Ivancic, G. Balakrishnan, A. Gupta, S. Sankaranarayanan, N. Maeda, H. Tokuoka, T. Imoto, and Y. Miyazaki, DC2: A framework for scalable, scope-bounded software verification, In Intl. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2011.
M. K. Ganai, N. Arora, C. Wang, A. Gupta, and G. Balakrishnan, BEST: A symbolic testing tool for predicting multi-threaded program failures, In Intl. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2011. [Tool Paper]

2010

T. W. Reps, J. Lim, A. V. Thakur, G. Balakrishnan, and A. Lal, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Analyzing and Verifying Machine Code, In Intl. Conf. on Computer Aided Verification (CAV), 2010. [Invited Paper]
G. Balakrishnan, M. K. Ganai, A. Gupta, F. Ivancic, V. Kahlon, W. Li, N. Maeda, N. Papakonstantinou, S. Sankaranarayanan, N. Sinha, and C. Wang, Scalable and precise program analysis at NEC, In Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD), 2010.

2009

G. Balakrishnan, S. Sankaranarayanan, F. Ivancic, and A. Gupta, Refining the control structure of loops using static analysis, In Intl. Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), 2009.

2008

T. W. Reps and G. Balakrishnan, Improved Memory-Access Analysis for x86 Executables, In Intl. Conf. on Compiler Construction (CC), 2008. [Paper accompanying a unifying invited talk at ETAPS 08] [Invited Paper]
G. Balakrishnan, S. Sankaranarayanan, F. Ivancic, O. Wei, and A. Gupta, SLR: Path-Sensitive Analysis through Infeasible-Path Detection and Syntactic Language Refinement, In Static Analysis Symposium (SAS), 2008.
G. Balakrishnan and M. K. Ganai, PED: Proof-Guided Error Diagnosis by Triangulation of Program Error Causes, In Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM), 2008.
G. Balakrishnan and T. W. Reps, Analyzing Stripped Device-Driver Executables, In Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS), 2008.

2007

G. Balakrishnan and T. W. Reps, DIVINE: DIscovering Variables IN Executables, In Intl. Conf. on Verification Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI), 2007. [Invited Paper]

2006

T. W. Reps, G. Balakrishnan, and J. Lim, Intermediate-representation recovery from low-level code, In Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation (PEPM), 2006. [Invited Paper]
G. Balakrishnan and T. W. Reps, Recency-Abstraction for Heap-Allocated Storage, In Static Analysis Symposium (SAS), 2006.

2005

T. W. Reps, G. Balakrishnan, J. Lim, and T. Teitelbaum, A Next-Generation Platform for Analyzing Executables, In Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS), 2005. [Invited Paper]
G. Balakrishnan, T. W. Reps, N. Kidd, A. Lal, J. Lim, D. Melski, R. Gruian, S. H. Yong, C. Chen, and T. Teitelbaum, Model Checking x86 Executables with CodeSurfer/x86 and WPDS++, In Intl. Conf. on Computer Aided Verification (CAV), 2005. [Tool Paper]
G. Balakrishnan, R. Gruian, T. W. Reps, and T. Teitelbaum, CodeSurfer/x86-A Platform for Analyzing x86 Executables, In Intl. Conf. on Compiler Construction (CC), 2005. [Tool Paper]
G. Balakrishnan, T. W. Reps, D. Melski, and T. Teitelbaum, WYSINWYX: What You See Is Not What You eXecute, In VSTTE, 2005.

2004

G. Balakrishnan and T. W. Reps, Analyzing Memory Accesses in x86 Executables, In Intl. Conf. on Compiler Construction (CC), 2004. [Won the EAPLS 2004 best paper award]

Reprinted In Collections

T. W. Reps, G. Balakrishnan, J. Lim, and T. Teitelbaum, A Next-Generation Platform for Analyzing Executables, In ARO-DHS Malware Detection Workshop, Volume 27, Advances In Information Security, Springer, 2007. [Reprinted from Proc. 3rd Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems, Tsukuba, Japan, Nov. 3-5, 2005]

Other Publications and Reports

G. Balakrishnan, T. Reps, N. Kidd, A. Lal, J. Lim, D. Melski, R. Gruian, S. Yong, C. Chen, and T. Teitelbaum, Model checking x86 executables with CodeSurfer/x86 and WPDS++, In In Proc. Workshop on the Evaluation of Software Defect Detection Tools, june, 2005. [Co-located with PLDI 2005]