Zhizhen Cai

About

I'm Zhizhen (Cathy) Cai, first-year PhD student in UIUC CS. Before that I got my B.E. in Computer Science at University of Science and Technology of China.

I'm interested in system verification and want to make it a bit easier for everyone to use verified systems.

I'm open to interesting discussions at [email protected]

Publications

• Welder:: Compositional Liveness Verification of Cluster Control Planes

  Zhizhen Cathy Cai, Nikhil Data, Jiawei Tyler Gu, Cody Rivera, Tej Chajed, Oded Padon, Tianyin Xu, Xudong Sun
  The 32nd Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP'26)

  My talk slides at Verus Retreat (2026)

Past Present Future

2024-now: Work with Tianyin, Xudong and Nikhil in System Verification.

2026-now: Work with AWS Automated Reasoning Group to verify production systems. Mentored by Jenny and Mariana.

2022-2023: I interned at Systems and Networking Research Group of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), and was mentored by Qi and Qianxi. I had my best time in undergrad there hacking PostgreSQL. I decided to try research after that.

Misc

• I was in USTC Linux User Group (2021-2022)
• 

  Enjoying my trip to Bainbridge Island, Seattle