Rijnard
van Tonder

About Me

Hi! I'm Rijnard. I work a lot with software. I'm interested in developing new ways to analyze, manipulate, and fix code. I completed my Computer Science Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. I love research but also want to make those ideas a reality in practice. That's why I currently work at Sourcegraph, where I apply my research background to develop new tools and techniques for large scale code search and automated refactoring.

Pronunciation
Twitter
GitHub
Google Scholar
LinkedIn
Curriculum Vitae

Projects

Software

I develop Comby a popular tool for rewriting code.
Deconstructing programs for compiler fuzzing (HN front page, 2022). How to find deep compiler bugs quickly with syntax-aware fuzzing that quickly. I found one in the lastest Rust compiler in <24 hours with his approach.
A simple program reducer for any language (HN front page, 2021). A post on minimizing programs that cause compilers to crash, and how to do it super easily.
How not to break a search engine or: What I learned about unglamorous engineering (HN front page, 2021). A piece on the importance of "unglamorous engineering" and my experience porting the most sensitive component of a code search engine used by hundreds of thousands of developers.
A Year in the Life of a Compiler Fuzzing Campaign (HN front page, 2021). Joint work on smarter ways for fuzzing compilers. We talk about bugs we found in smart contract languages using this approach.

Academic Publications

Rijnard van Tonder, You Don't Know Search: Helping Users Find Code by Automatically Evaluating Alternative Queries , ICSE SEIP, Best Industry Paper, '23.
Acceptance rate: ⁴¹⁄ ₁₄₆ ≈ 28%
Alex Groce, Rijnard van Tonder, Goutamkumar Tulajappa Kalburgi, Claire Le Goues Making No-fuss Compiler Fuzzing Effective , CC, '22.
Acceptance rate: ²⁰⁄ ₆₂ ≈ 32.2%

Alex Groce, Kush Jain, Rijnard van Tonder, Goutamkumar Tulajappa Kalburgi, and Claire Le Goues, Looking for Lacunae in Bitcoin Core’s Fuzzing Efforts (Short) , ICSE SEIP, '22.
Rijnard van Tonder, Towards Fully Declarative Program Analysis via Source Code Transformation , Working paper, arXiv:2112.12398v1, '21.
Cody Kinneer, Rijnard van Tonder, David Garlan, Claire Le Goues Building Reusable Repertoires for Stochastic Self-* Planners , ACSOS, '20.
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Tailoring Programs for Static Analysis via Program Transformation , ICSE '20.
Acceptance rate: ¹²⁹⁄ ₆₁₇ ≈ 20.9%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Lightweight Multi-Language Syntax Transformation with Parser Parser Combinators , PLDI '19.
Acceptance rate: ⁷⁶⁄ ₂₇₄ ≈ 27.7%
Asher Trockman, Rijnard van Tonder, and Bogdan Vasilescu Striking Gold in Software Repositories? An Econometric Study of Cryptocurrencies on GitHub (Short) , MSR '19.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁵⁄ ₄₄ ≈ 34.1%
Rijnard van Tonder, Asher Trockman, and Claire Le Goues A Panel Data Set of Cryptocurrency Development Activity on GitHub (Data Showcase) , MSR '19.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁷⁄ ₄₀ ≈ 42.5%
Rijnard van Tonder, Claire Le Goues Towards s/engineer/bot: Principles for Program Repair Bots (Position paper) , BotSE@ICSE '19.
Acceptance rate: ⁷⁄ ₁₃ ≈ 53.8%
Rijnard van Tonder, John Kotheimer, and Claire Le Goues, Semantic Crash Bucketing , ASE '18.
Acceptance rate: ⁶⁹⁄ ₃₄₆ ≈ 19.9%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Cross-Architecture Lifter Synthesis , SEFM '18.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁷⁄ ₅₈ ≈ 29.3%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Static Automated Program Repair for Heap Properties , Distinguished Paper , ICSE '18.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁰⁵⁄ ₅₀₂ ≈ 20.9%
Ivan Gotovchits, Rijnard van Tonder, and David Brumley, Saluki: Finding Taint-style Vulnerabilities with Static Property Checking , BAR@NDSS '18.
Acceptance rate: ⁸⁄ ₂₂ ≈ 36.3%
Rijnard van Tonder and Claire Le Goues, Defending against the attack of the micro-clones (Short) , ICPC '16.
Acceptance rate: ¹⁵⁄ ₃₁ ≈ 48.3%

Other Docs

My Dissertation .

My Thesis Proposal .

My previous research group's award winning paper on automatically fixing COBOL programs, SIGBOVIK '18.

Work

Sourcegraph
Oct 2019-current | Las Vegas, NV |

Working on ubiquitous code search, intelligence, and large scale transformation.

Facebook
May-Aug 2018 | Menlo Park, CA |

Added static taint analysis support to Pyre , the Python static type checker at Facebook.

Carnegie Mellon University
Spring 2018 | Pittsburgh, PA |

Teaching Assistant for 17-819O: Program Analysis.

Facebook
May-Aug 2017 | Menlo Park, CA |

Added parallel processing (5x speedup) and initial LSP support to Pyre , the Python static type checker at Facebook.

Carnegie Mellon University
Spring 2015 | Pittsburgh, PA |

Teaching Assistant for 18-739L (CTF-based security course).

Microsoft Research
May-Jul 2014 | Redmond, WA |

Intern at Microsoft Research with Patrice Godefroid in the RiSE group.

Education

2014-2019 | Ph.D. Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
2014-2018 | M. Software Eng., Carnegie Mellon University
2013-2014 | M. Electronic Eng., Stellenbosch University
2008-2012 | B.Sc. Hon. Computer Science, Stellenbosch University