Hanzhi Liu (刘瀚之)

Ph.D. candidate, Nanjing University

I'm a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in SPAR Group of Institute of Computer Software, Nanjing University, supervised by Assoc. Prof. Yanyan Jiang and Prof. Chang Xu. Currently my research focuses on understanding and debugging operating system kernels and other system software. I'm also interested in system reliability and observability, as well as designing systems that can solve critical real-world problems.

Selected Publications

  1. TOCS'26Visualinux: Visual Debugging for the Linux Kernel

    Hanzhi Liu, Yanyan Jiang, Chang Xu

    ACM Transactions on Computer Systems

    Just AcceptedInvited SubmissionCCF-A
    ForthcomingTool
  2. EuroSys'25Understanding the Linux Kernel, Visually

    Hanzhi Liu, Yanyan Jiang, Chang Xu

    Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Computer Systems

    Best Student Paper AwardAcceptance: 12.2%, 85/696CCF-A
    DOIPDFTool

Honors & Awards

Research

  • EuroSys'25 Best Student Paper Award

Programming Contest Awards

  • Gold Medal, ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest (Jiaozuo Site), Nov 25, 2018
  • Silver Medal, ACM-ICPC Asia-East Continent Final (Xi'an Site), Dec 16, 2018
  • Silver Medal, ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest (Nanjing Site), Oct 14, 2018
  • Silver Medal, China Collegiate Programming Contest (Jilin Site), Sep 22, 2018
  • Bronze Medal, ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest (Xi'an Site), Oct 29, 2017

Personal Honors

  • The Outstanding Graduates Awards of Nanyang Shuyuan, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 2020
  • The CCF Elite Collegiate Award, China Computer Federation, 2019

Scholarship

  • Shidi Lu's First Stage Scholarship, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 2019
  • Shidi Lu's Second Stage Scholarship, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 2018

Talks

Understanding the Linux Kernel, Visually

  1. 2025.10 Huawei HarmonyOS DFX Group (invited talk, online)
  2. 2025.5 ETH Zurich AST Lab (invited talk, online)
  3. 2025.5 Huawei Poincare Lab (invited talk, online)
  4. 2024.11 The 27th ChinaSys Workshop (ChinaSys'24 Fall) (accepted as oral, Tianjin, China)

Education & Work

  1. 2022.9 - present Ph.D., Institute of Computer Software, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, supervised by Yanyan Jiang and Chang Xu.
  2. 2020.9 - 2022.8 M.Sc., Institute of Computer Software, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, supervised by Yanyan Jiang and Chang Xu.
  3. 2016.9 - 2020.6 B.Eng., Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University.
  4. 2019.6 - 2019.8 Client-side Developer Intern, Platform and Content Group, Tencent.
  5. 2013.9 - 2016.6 High School Education, Senior High Department of Shenzhen Experimental School.

Teaching

  1. 2022 - 2023 TA, Introduction of Computer System (2022 Autumn, 2023 Autumn), taught by Huiyan Wang, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University.
  2. 2022 - 2023 TA, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (2022 Spring, 2023 Spring), taught by Yanyan Jiang, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University.
  3. 2016 - 2020 Informal TA, The C Programming Language (Autumn), taught by Haiping Zhu, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University.
  4. 2019.1 - 2019.6 Acting chairman of ICPC team, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University.

Selected Projects

Research Projects

  • Visualinux (2023 - 2025): A debugging framework that enables practical visual debugging for the Linux kernel. This work has been accepted by EuroSys 2025 and received the Best Student Paper Award.

Amateur Projects

  • JM233333's Blog (rebuilding; temporarily unavailable): Nearly one million words in total, including a large number of independently-written original articles.
    Details
    • Basic tutorials of computer science knowledge, including programming languages (C/C++), algorithms and data structures, and graph theory.
    • Detailed solutions of programming problems, including LeetCode and challenging ICPC problems.
    • Other computer science knowledge sharing articles.

Closed Projects

  • New Mystery MagicTower: Evolution (2016/2024): Large-scale 2D magictower-type role-playing game, downloaded more than 50k times in total. An evolution version was re-released in 2024.
    Details
    • The game is far from excellent, but it was made in my spare time when I was still in high school.
    • Built on RGSS, a game engine that has been abandoned by the times.
    • Abundant and well-designed game content, but with naive arts and stories.
    • This game is no longer maintained, but the final version artifact can still be downloaded.
  • xv6 ported to AM (2021) (not yet public): Porting xv6 OS to AbstractMachine.
    Details
    • This project is supervised by Dr. Yanyan Jiang.
    • Based on AbstractMachine, a minimal, modularized, and machine-independent hardware abstraction layer.
  • Data Structure Visualizer (2019): PC desktop application implemented with JavaFX, which provides visualization and interaction of algorithms and data structures as well as high customizability.
    Details
    • Designed as an auxiliary tool for teaching.
    • Provides graphical representation, step-by-step animation demonstration, and synchronous code tracking.
    • Supports user extensions and batch processing operations.
  • Basic Implementation of Skeletal Animation Retargeting (2019): The work I participated in during my internship at Tencent. The project is owned by Tencent.
    Details
    • The implementation is based on three.js.
    • Requires basic knowledge of computer graphics, 3D mathematics, skeletal animation, etc.
    • This project has been handed over to Tencent.

Hobbies

  • Mini Game Development (Amateur)
  • Writing Technical Blogs about Computer Science
  • Playing Games (e.g. Arknights)
  • Enjoying Music (e.g. Monster Siren Records, Yanni, falcom jdk, etc.)
  • Swimming