Haoyu Gao

Haoyu Gao

I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne

Haoyu Gao — PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne

About Me

I am currently a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Melbourne (started from Feb 2023). I am supervised by A/Prof Christoph Treude and Dr. Mansooreh Zahedi.

My research intersects empirical and automated software engineering, focusing on improving how developers create, maintain, and use software documentation. I study documentation as a socio-technical artefact, combining repository mining, qualitative methods, and machine learning. With the rise of LLMs, my work is pivoting towards human–AI interaction, specifically examining how development knowledge is communicated to AI agents.

Qualitative Methods Software Ecosystems Documentation Maintenance Machine Learning for SE Human-AI Interaction

Before starting my Ph.D, I obtained my Master's degree in Information Technology from the University of Melbourne (WAM: 86.7/100), and my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Fuzhou University, China.

News

  • May 2026 📄 Short paper accepted at MSR'26 — "On Autopilot? An Empirical Study of Human-AI Teaming and Review Practices in Open Source"
  • Jun 2025 📄 Paper accepted at ICSME'25 — "From Release to Adoption: Challenges in Reusing Pre-trained AI Models for Downstream Developers"
  • May 2025 📄 Paper accepted at ACL Findings'25 — "CodeReviewQA: The Code Review Comprehension Assessment for Large Language Models"
  • Mar 2025 📄 Paper published in IEEE TSE — "Adapting Installation Instructions in Rapidly Evolving Software Ecosystems"
  • Sep 2025 ✈️ Visiting Postgraduate Research Student at Singapore Management University (Sep 2025 – Feb 2026)
  • Oct 2024 🎤 Presented at ESEM'24 on documenting ethical considerations in open source AI models

Publications

Published

MSR'26
On Autopilot? An Empirical Study of Human-AI Teaming and Review Practices in Open Source
H. Gao, P. Banyongrakkul, H. Guan, M. Zahedi, C. Treude
Short Paper in MSR'26: 23rd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 2026 (CORE A)
ICSME'25
From Release to Adoption: Challenges in Reusing Pre-trained AI Models for Downstream Developers
P. Banyongrakkul, M. Zahedi, P. Thongtanunam, C. Treude, and H. Gao
ICSME'25: 41st International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (CORE A)
ACL Findings'25
CodeReviewQA: The Code Review Comprehension Assessment for Large Language Models
H. Lin, C. Liu, H. Gao, P. Thongtanunam, and C. Treude
Findings of ACL'25: The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (CORE A*)
TSE'25
Adapting Installation Instructions in Rapidly Evolving Software Ecosystems
H. Gao, C. Treude, and M. Zahedi
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2025 (CORE A*)
ESEM'24
Documenting Ethical Considerations in Open Source AI Models
H. Gao, M. Zahedi, C. Treude, S. Ronsenstock, and M. Cheong
ESEM'24: 18th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2024 (CORE A)
FSE'23
Evaluating Transfer Learning for Simplifying GitHub READMEs
H. Gao, C. Treude, and M. Zahedi
ESEC/FSE'23: Proceedings of the Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, 2023 (CORE A*)

Under Review

EMSE (Major Revision)
AI Safety in the Eyes of the Downstream Developer: A First Look at Concerns, Practices, and Challenges
H. Gao, M. Zahedi, W. Jiang, H. Lin, J. Davis, and C. Treude
TSE (Major Revision)
Does My README File Need To Be Updated? Exploring LLM-Based README Maintenance
H. Gao, H. Lin, C. Treude, G. Gay, and M. Zahedi
Under Submission
When AI Models Become Dependencies: Studying the Evolution of Pre-Trained Model Reuse in Downstream Software Systems
P. Banyongrakkul, M. Zahedi, C. Treude, H. Gao, and P. Thongtanunam
Under Submission
Fine-grained Approaches for Confidence Calibration of LLMs in Automated Code Revision
H. Lin, C. Liu, H. Gao, P. Thongtanunam, and C. Treude
Under Submission
ChatGPT as an Installation Assistant: How Novices Use LLMs for Software Tool Installation
L. Salerno, H. Gao, P. Thongtanunam, C. Treude

Contact

If you would like to collaborate, feel free to reach out by sending an email :)

haoyug1@student.unimelb.edu.au

700 Swanston St, Carlton VIC 3053, Victoria, Australia

Download CV (PDF)

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