Yifei Liu

Software Engineer

Google

Biography

I am Yifei Liu, a Software Engineer at Google Cloud in the Greater Seattle area, working on building efficient, reliable, and scalable cloud infrastructure for AI/ML and beyond.

I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stony Brook University . I conducted my research at the File Systems and Storage Lab (FSL) , under the guidance of Prof. Erez Zadok and in collaboration with Prof. Geoff Kuenning , Prof. Scott A. Smolka , and many others. I focused on enhancing storage reliability and correctness through model checking and automated testing of kernel file systems.

My work produced tools and frameworks that enhance the correctness, reliability, and functionality of modern storage systems. My Ph.D. dissertation titled “Advancing File System Model Checking: Coverage, Framework, and Scalability” is available here .

Interests

Storage Systems
Operating Systems
Cloud Computing
Formal Verification

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2019 - 2025

Stony Brook University
M.Eng. in Computer System Architecture, 2016 - 2019

Huazhong University of Science and Technology
B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology, 2012 - 2016

Huazhong Agricultural University

News

Aug. 2025: Started working as a Software Engineer at Google Cloud .
Jul. 2025: Successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation; thanks to my committee and advisor.
Jul. 2025: A paper on coverage metrics and crash consistency testing was accepted to SYSTOR 2025 .
Apr. 2025: A paper on knee/elbow point detection was accepted to the SoftwareX journal.
Nov. 2024: Passed my thesis proposal (preliminary exam).

More News

Feb. 2024: A paper on multi-tier caching was accepted to the Performance Evaluation journal.
Dec. 2023: A paper on file system model checking was accepted to FAST 2024 .
Aug. 2023: A paper on multi-tier caching was accepted to MASCOTS 2023 .
May 2023: A paper on coverage metrics for file system testing was accepted to HotStorage 2023 .
May 2022: Started a summer internship at Samsung Semiconductor .
Mar. 2022: Delivered a presentation with Prof. Scott Smolka at Dutch Model Checking Day 2022 .
Jan. 2022: Passed the Research Proficiency Examination and advanced to candidacy.
Jun. 2021: A paper on model checking for file system development was accepted to HotStorage 2021 .
Feb. 2020: A paper on content sifting storage was accepted to DAC 2020 .
Jan. 2020: Joined File Systems and Storage Lab (FSL) .

Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.

Yifei Liu, Geoff Kuenning, Md. Kamal Parvez, Scott Smolka, Erez Zadok

September 2025 18th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference (SYSTOR 2025), Virtual.

Enhanced File System Testing through Input and Output Coverage

PDF BibTeX ACM Venue Slides Video Code

Mário Antunes, Tyler Estro, Pranav Bhandari, Anshul Gandhi, Geoff Kuenning, Yifei Liu, Carl Waldspurger, Avani Wildani, Erez Zadok

May 2025 SoftwareX

Kneeliverse: A universal knee-detection library for performance curves

PDF BibTeX Elsevier

Tyler Estro, Mário Antunes, Pranav Bhandari, Anshul Gandhi, Geoff Kuenning, Yifei Liu, Carl Waldspurger, Avani Wildani, Erez Zadok

February 2024 Performance Evaluation (PEVA)

Accelerating Multi-Tier Storage Cache Simulations Using Knee Detection

PDF BibTeX Elsevier

Yifei Liu, Manish Adkar, Gerard Holzmann, Geoff Kuenning, Pei Liu, Scott Smolka, Wei Su, Erez Zadok

February 2024 22nd USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST 2024), Santa Clara, CA.

Metis: File System Model Checking via Versatile Input and State Exploration

PDF BibTeX USENIX Venue Slides Video Poster Code Feature on Chameleon Cloud

Tyler Estro, Mário Antunes, Pranav Bhandari, Anshul Gandhi, Geoff Kuenning, Yifei Liu, Carl Waldspurger, Avani Wildani, Erez Zadok

October 2023 31st International Symposium on the Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS 2023), Stony Brook, NY.