Yifan Zhang
Other people with similar names: YiFan Zhang, Yifan Zhang
Unverified author pages with similar names: Yifan Zhang
2026
SynthFix: Adaptive Neuro-Symbolic Code Vulnerability Repair
Yifan Zhang | Jieyu Li | Kexin Pei | Yu Huang | Kevin Leach
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Yifan Zhang | Jieyu Li | Kexin Pei | Yu Huang | Kevin Leach
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise for automated code repair but often struggle with the complex semantic and structural correctness required. We present SynthFix, a hybrid neural-symbolic framework that improves LLM-based vulnerability repair by unifying code synthesis with compiler-informed symbolic feedback. The core of our approach is an adaptive training strategy where a neural Router Model directs code samples to either Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) to learn common patterns or Reward Fine-Tuning (RFT) with symbolic rewards for complex, iterative refinement. On the FixJS (JavaScript) and CodeFlaws (C) benchmarks, SynthFix achieves up to 18% relative improvement in CodeBLEU/CrystalBLEU and 32% in Exact Match over strong SFT and RFT baselines. Our results show that this adaptive combination of training strategies, which mirrors how developers alternate between pattern application and tool feedback, significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of LLM-based vulnerability repair. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/CoderDoge1108/SynthFix.
EyeMulator: Improving Code Language Models by Mimicking Human Visual Attention
Yifan Zhang | Chen Huang | Yueke Zhang | Jiahao Zhang | Toby Jia-Jun Li | Collin McMillan | Kevin Leach | Yu Huang
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Yifan Zhang | Chen Huang | Yueke Zhang | Jiahao Zhang | Toby Jia-Jun Li | Collin McMillan | Kevin Leach | Yu Huang
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Code Language Models (CodeLLMs) traditionally learn attention based solely on statistical input-output token correlations ("machine attention"). In contrast, human developers rely on intuition, selectively fixating on semantically salient tokens during program comprehension. We present EyeMulator, a model-agnostic technique to align CodeLLM attention with human visual attention without architectural changes. By extracting scan paths from eye-tracking data, we derive token-level attention weights used to augment the loss function during fine-tuning. This induces the model to mimic human focus. Our evaluation across StarCoder, Llama-3.2, and DeepSeek-Coder shows that EyeMulator significantly outperforms baselines, achieving gains of over 30 CodeBLEU points in translation and up to 22 BERTScore points in summarization. Ablation studies confirm that these gains stem directly from replicating human attention dynamics. Artifacts are available at https://zenodo.org/records/17205682.
2025
CONSTRUCTA: Automating Commercial Construction Schedules in Fabrication Facilities with Large Language Models
Yifan Zhang | Xue Yang
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 3: Industry Track)
Yifan Zhang | Xue Yang
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 3: Industry Track)
Automating planning with LLMs presents transformative opportunities for traditional industries, yet remains underexplored. In commercial construction, the complexity of automated scheduling often requires manual intervention to ensure precision. We propose CONSTRUCTA, a novel framework leveraging LLMs to optimize construction schedules in complex projects like semiconductor fabrication. CONSTRUCTA addresses key challenges by: (1) integrating construction-specific knowledge through static RAG; (2) employing context-sampling techniques inspired by architectural expertise to provide relevant input; and (3) deploying Construction DPO to align schedules with expert preferences using RLHF. Experiments on proprietary data demonstrate performance improvements of +42.3% in missing value prediction, +79.1% in dependency analysis, and +28.9% in automated planning compared to baseline methods, showcasing its potential to revolutionize construction workflows and inspire domain-specific LLM advancements.
ELABORATION: A Comprehensive Benchmark on Human-LLM Competitive Programming
Xinwei Yang | Zhaofeng Liu | Chen Huang | Jiashuai Zhang | Tong Zhang | Yifan Zhang | Wenqiang Lei
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Xinwei Yang | Zhaofeng Liu | Chen Huang | Jiashuai Zhang | Tong Zhang | Yifan Zhang | Wenqiang Lei
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
While recent research increasingly emphasizes the value of human-LLM collaboration in competitive programming and proposes numerous empirical methods, a comprehensive understanding remains elusive due to the fragmented nature of existing studies and their use of diverse, application-specific human feedback. Thus, our work serves a three-fold purpose: First, we present the first taxonomy of human feedback consolidating the entire programming process, which promotes fine-grained evaluation. Second, we introduce ELABORATIONSET, a novel programming dataset specifically designed for human-LLM collaboration, meticulously annotated to enable large-scale simulated human feedback and facilitate cost-effective real human interaction studies. Third, we introduce ELABORATION, a novel benchmark to facilitate a thorough assessment of human-LLM competitive programming. With ELABORATION, we pinpoint strengthes and weaknesses of existing methods, thereby setting the foundation for furture improvement. Our dataset and code will be openly released.