Shawn (Wanxiang) Zhong
Shawn (Wanxiang) Zhong is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, advised by Andrea and Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau. He explores how AI and other modern technologies are reshaping operating systems.
His recent work addressed the widespread corruption and leaks of user data by AI agents; he built an agent-native filesystem that ensures data safety while preserving agent autonomy. His earlier work spans deterministic Linux scheduler testing, eBPF kernel extension reliability, and persistent memory filesystem performance. More broadly, he is interested in machine learning compilers (Triton), system verification (Verus), and interactive visualizers for systems internals.
He is graduating in August 2026 and looking for industry research and engineering opportunities. The best way to reach him is by email.
Publications
Revealing the Unstable Foundations of eBPF-Based Kernel Extensions. EuroSys ’25. [Paper] [Code] [Dataset]
Shawn Zhong, Jing Liu, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, and Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau.
MadFS: Per-File Virtualization for Userspace Persistent Memory Filesystems. FAST ’23. [Paper] [Code]
Shawn Zhong, Chenhao Ye, Guanzhou Hu, Suyan Qu, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, and Michael Swift.
PBoS: Probabilistic Bag-of-Subwords for Generalizing Word Embedding. EMNLP ’20 Findings. [Paper] [Code]
Zhao Jinman, Shawn Zhong, Xiaomin Zhang, and Yingyu Liang.