Zhe Hou's Home Page

Senior Lecturer at the School of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Griffith Univerity
Address: N44 1.12, 170 Kessels Rd, Nathan, 4111, Australia
Email: z dot hou at griffith dot edu dot au
Tel: +61 7 3735 9270

Links

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Short Bio

Zhe Hou (common: "Zee", correct-ish: "Hojer") obtained his PhD from the Australian National University, Canberra, and was a student of Rajeev Gore and Alwen Tiu. His PhD topic was automated reasoning for separation logic --- a logic for reasoning about the correctness of computer programs with pointers and other mutable data structures. In 2015, he joined Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and worked under Yang Liu and Alwen Tiu as a postdoc on formal verification of information flow security for instruction set architecture and weak memory models. Planned to settle down in Melbourne, but after a call from Jin Song Dong, he joined Griffith University in 2017 on a project to develop trusted autonomous systems and advanced model checking techniques in collaboration with Australia Defense Science and Technology. He became a faculty member at Griffith in late 2019.

Research Interests

Automated reasoning: separation logic, theorem proving, model checking.
Machine learning/LLM: large scale data analytics, eXplaiable AI (XAI), large language models.
Formal methods: program verification, weak memory model, information-flow security.
Autonomous systems: planning, goal reasoning, federated reinforcement learning, multi-agent collaboration.
Blockchain: interoperability, cross-chain asset transfer protocol, illegal transaction analysis.
Sports analytics: strategy and tactics anlaysis, sports video anlaysis.
Quantum computing: quantum program verificaiton, quantum algorithms for computation.

See publications by topic.

Education

PhD of Computer Science, the Australian National University, 2015.
Master of Computing, the Australian National University, 2011.
Bachelor of Software Engineering, Xidian University, 2010.

Work Experience

Senior Lecturer at the School of ICT, Griffith University, since 2023.
Lecturer at the School of ICT, Griffith University, 2019 - 2022.
Research Fellow at IIIS, Griffith University, 2017 - 2019.
Postdoc Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, 2016 - 2017.
Research Assistant at Nanyang Technological University, 2015 - 2016.
Lecturer (sessional) at the Australian National University, 2014.
Tutor (sessional) at the Australian National University, 2012 - 2014.

Awards, Certificates & Fellowships

Member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), since 2023.
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, since 2022.
Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, since 2020.
Associate of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), since 2020.
ICECCS Organiser Leadership Award, 2019.
PDCAT Organiser Leadership Award, 2019.
ICFEM Chair Leadership Award, 2018.
John Makepeace Bennett Award Australian Best PhD Thesis Runner-up, 2016.
ACS certified working experience as a software engineer, 2014.
ANU CECS Dean's Travel Grant Award, 2013.
ANU Ph.D. Scholarship and Tuition Fee Exemption Sponsorship, 2011.
First Class Academic Award in Xidian University, 2010.
First Class Academic Award in Software Engineering Department, Xidian University, 2009.

Spare Time

Zhe has a garage project in which he and his friends integrate the state-of-the-art automated reasoning techniques into an efficient machine learning tool called Silas in order to achieve explainable and verifiable machine learning. The result is a Silas extension that is able to extract the core decision-making of machine learning models and formally verify that the machine learning models are correct with respect to certain user-specified criteria.

Zhe is also a sketch artist, and he takes custom orders for a price of AU$ 500K and above. See some samples here.