I’m a third-year Computer Science PhD student studying formal methods at the University of Southern California (USC), advised by Prof. Chao Wang. My research interests are in abstract interpretation, specifically in automating the challenging aspects of software verification and the design of verification tools. I am also interested in using formal techniques to improve the quality and security of LLM-generated code.

I am also a Operations Team Member at SIGPLAN-M, a wonderful group which pairs up mentors and mentees in the PL community. Check it out!

Prior to USC, I received my B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from UC Davis, where I was advised by Prof. Aditya V. Thakur.

Here’s my CV!

Recent News

• [Jul. 2025] Papers Accepted to LMPL 2025
• [Jun. 2025] Presented @ ECOOP 2025 🇳🇴!
• [Mar. 2025] Received an NSF GRFP Honorable Mention!
• [Aug. 2023] Started my PhD @ USC!
• [Jun. 2023] Graduated from UC Davis!
• [Apr. 2023] Paper Accepted to PLDI 2023!

Publications

• Position: Vibe Coding Needs Vibe Reasoning – Improving Vibe Coding with Formal Verification
  Jacqueline L. Mitchell*, Yasser Shaaban*
  The 1st International Workshop on Language Models and Programming Languages (LMPL 2025, co-located with SPLASH 2025) (To Appear)
• Understanding Formal Reasoning Failures in LLMs as Abstract Interpreters
  Jacqueline L. Mitchell, Brian Hyeongseok Kim, Chenyu Zhou, Chao Wang.
  The 1st International Workshop on Language Models and Programming Languages (LMPL 2025, co-located with SPLASH 2025) (To Appear)
• Quantifying Cache Side-Channel Leakage by Refining Set-Based Abstractions [link]
  Jacqueline L. Mitchell, Chao Wang
  39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)
• Architecture-Preserving Provable Repair of Deep Neural Networks [link]
  Zhe Tao, Stephanie Nawas, Jacqueline L. Mitchell, and Aditya V. Thakur
  44th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2023)

* Denotes equal contribution.

Honors and Awards

• NSF GRFP Honorable Mention (2025)
• Scholarship to attend VMW (Verification Mentoring Workshop) at CAV (2024)
• Selected to attend CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women Workshop, Minneapolis, MN. (2024)
• USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi PhD Fellowship

Service

• NLDL Reviewer (2026)
• POPL External Reviewer (2026)
• ASE External Reviewer (2025)
• ICML Reviewer (2025)
• CAV Artifact Evaluation Commitee Member (2025)
• NeurIPS Reviewer (2024)
• SIGPLAN-M SIGPLAN-M Operations Team Member (2024-Present)
• USC Viterbi Summer Undergraduate Research Mentor (2024)
• CC (Compiler Construction) External Reviewer (2024)
• CAV Artifact Evaluation Commitee Member (2024)