Mrigank Pawagi

I am an incoming PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, where I will be working with Prof. Mayur Naik and Prof. Michael Hicks. I am broadly interested in improving the quality and reliability of software by combining the guarantees of symbolic methods with the semantic capabilities of large language models (LLMs).

Previously, I was an undergrad at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru where I studied Mathematics and Computing. Before coming to Bengaluru, I lived in Noida for over 18 years.

GlueTest — Code Translation Validation

I began my research in software engineering by working on code translation (between programming languages) validation with Salman Abid, Darko Marinov, Saikat Dutta, and other collaborators. We developed GlueTest, a framework for incrementally testing code translations using language-interoperability. (ICSME NIER '24. Blog post.)

I also contributed to the AlphaTrans project during a summer internship at UIUC where I worked with Ali Reza Ibrahimzada, Reyhaneh Jabbarvand, Darko Marinov, and other collaborators on automated code translation of entire repositories using LLMs. I was particularly involved in adapting GlueTest to validate LLM-generated code translations of individual functions in isolation. This enabled precise detection and localization of bugs to provide feedback to the LLM for repair. (FSE '25. Blog post.)

Improving Software Reliability at Scale

I am currently working as a Research Intern with Aseem Rastogi, Nikita Yadav, and other collaborators in the Future of Scalable Software Engineering (FoSSE) team of Microsoft on automatically triaging and fixing static analysis alerts reported by CodeQL, Roslyn Analyzers, PREfast, and other static analyzers. Our work has been deployed within Microsoft where it has significantly reduced developer toil in improving software security and reliability across hundreds of production codebases. (Related blog post.)

Engineering Quality Software

Specifications. I have been collaborating with Lize Shao, Wenxi Wang, and others from the University of Virginia on automated detection of ambiguities in Internet Protocol specifications (RFCs) using LLMs. Our work has found several previously unreported ambiguities in recent RFCs, many of which have been verified as official errata. (ASE '25, Website, Blog post.)

Verification. Having recently taken interest in software verification, I collaborated with Grayson Xie, Wenxi Wang, and others from the University of Virginia on developing a benchmark of competitive-programming problems for verifiable code generation in Rust with Verus. (Preprint, GitHub.)

Programming. I have also briefly worked with Utah PLT through UCSC OSPO on benchmarking the performance of Static Python with different levels of gradual typing. (Blog posts 1, 2, 3.)

Programming Pedagogy

I started my undergraduate research journey with Viraj Kumar with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss and explore several interesting topics related to software engineering education. One line of my work with him involved creating GuardRails, a tool to help students write better specifications by automatically discovering ambiguities in their function specifications. We also developed Probeable Problems which challenge students to ask clarifying questions about the problem statement presented to them. (ICER '24. COMPUTE '23. Blog post.)

Click here for all publications.

Fun Facts

Name trivia

• My first name is pronounced with the i as in "it" and the a as in "pass." The last name is pronounced like "paa-vuh-gee".
• I don't mind the Marathi pronunciation of my first name, Mrugank, where the u is like the u in "put" (and the rest as above).
• I couldn't correctly pronounce my name until the age of 7.

The most widely known meaning of my name in many Indian languages is "moon".

The explanation for this is that Mrigank means "deer-marked," coming from the combination, i.e., the samaas, of the Sanskrit words mriga (meaning "deer") and anka (meaning "mark" or "spot"). Though it has been used poetically to describe the moon in many Indian texts, it is not clear to me why the moon would be thought of as deer-marked. I have come across the following two theories.

• This could be a reference to a deer-shaped pareidolic image seen on the moon's surface.
• This could be a reference to the bright white-colored dots on the moon's surface which may resemble the spots on a deer. These dots are formed from fresh meteoritic impacts which expose the bright subsurface material on the moon.

While this may not in itself be very convincing, there is evidence from Indian literature that points toward this meaning. Some examples are listed below.

• The ancient Indian astronomer-astrologer Varahamihira used this term in his Brihat Jataka to refer to the moon.
• The Nidhanpur copperplate inscription mentions that the 11th king of the Varman dynasty, Susthitavarman, was named Sri Mriganka at birth. The inscription describes Sri Mriganka as having no blemishes or spots just like the moon.

Favorites

• My favorite music is all the music from TØP. |-/
• My favorite musical instrument is the ukulele. I have been learning to play a few of my favorite songs on it.
• My favorite sports are badminton and running.
• These are my favorite RSS feeds.

Digital rebellion

• I do not use WhatsApp.
• I pay to keep news free.
• I use an almost entirely de-Googled Android phone.
• I have deleted my accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. I have created archives of my LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn posts, and Tweets. Many of my projects have profiles or pages on these platforms, but they are permanently unmonitored. If you spot any social handle with my name, please be informed that it is not mine.

Vault from the multiverse

• My sister has a cool website that you should definitely check out. She is a high school senior interested in engineering. She also plays the ukulele like me, but much better.
• You should also check out my friend Yukta's website. Unlike me, she works on real science like curing cancer.
• When I was in high-school, I thought I could solve any problem in the world by making a website for it. Here is my maker-portfolio from high-school.
• My closest call with art was probably when my entry to the Desmos Global Math Art Contest 2021 was selected as a finalist. This was over a decade after I previously peaked at art in first grade when I won a consolation prize at Chinmaya Mission's Rang Bharo contest in Noida.

30-minute Guidance Sessions

I am committing one hour every week to help high school and undergraduate students with guidance related to academics, career, research, or anything else they would like to discuss. You can book a 30-minute slot with me using this Calendly link.