Emily Yu
Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University, Netherlands.
To reach me:
z.yu@liacs.leidenuniv.nl
As of October 2025, I am a tenured assistant professor in Computer Science at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
In the past, I was a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Thomas Henzinger’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. I received my PhD in the doctoral program ‘Logical Methods in Computer Science’ (LogiCS) funded by FWF, and the LIT AI Lab under the supervision of Prof. Armin Biere, at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria. My thesis was on hardware model checking certification. Before that, I completed my undergraduate studies in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, UK, where I was advised by Prof. Alessio Lomuscio.
Research
My research develops formal methods and automated reasoning techniques for building trustworthy systems, with a focus on safety-critical hardware and learning-enabled autonomous systems. Current topics include:
Neural Control for Safe Autonomy
I work on methods that make learning-enabled control systems safer and more trustworthy, with an emphasis on neural certificates, runtime monitoring, and formal guarantees for autonomous systems.
Research topics:
- How can we synthesize neural certificates that prove formal specifications for learned controllers?
- How can runtime monitors enforce formal safety guarantees for learning-enabled autonomous systems?
- How can formal logic, control theory, and machine learning be combined into practical verification tools?
Automated Reasoning and Hardware Model Checking
I develop certification and verification techniques for hardware and solver-based reasoning, including SAT-based model checking, independently checkable certificates, and trustworthy automated reasoning pipelines.
Research topics:
- How can model-checking results for hardware designs be accompanied by independently checkable certificates?
- How can we leverage certificates to teach LLMs to optimize for performance and efficiency without sacrificing correctness and safety?
- How can automated reasoning scale to complex safety-critical systems without sacrificing correctness guarantees?
Check out my publications or connect with me via email.
news
| Apr 21, 2026 | I will be giving a series of 6 lectures at the SETSS spring school 2026! |
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| Apr 21, 2026 | I will be giving a keynote talk at the Dutch Formal Methods Day! |
| Feb 08, 2026 | Two papers accepted to FM 2026! |
| Nov 11, 2025 | Looking forward to give an invited talk at IEEE Women in Circuits and Systems – Young Professionals (WiCAS-YP) Symposium, which will be held on 26 November 2025, in Leiden. |
| Nov 11, 2025 | Looking forward to give an invited talk at TU Delft, on 19 November 2025. |