Ahmed K. Zaher

PhD Candidate
HKUST
[email protected]


I am a PhD candidate at the ALPACAS research group at HKUST, where I am happy to be supervised by Amir Goharshady.

I am broadly interested in Algorithms, Complexity, Automata, Logic, and Games, as well as their applications in Formal Methods. One theme that I am actively working on is the use of Parameterized Algorithms and Complexity to solve problems in Compiler Optimization and Program Analysis.

My research is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme.

Publications

  1. [1]
    A New Approach to Optimal Function Inlining for Code Size Minimization via E-Graphs
    A.K. Goharshady, C.K. Lam, A. Pavlogiannis, A.K. Zaher
    OOPSLA 2026

  2. [2]
    Parameterized Algorithms and Complexity for Function Merging with Branch Reordering
    A.K. Goharshady, K. Kochekov, T. Shu, A.K. Zaher
    PLDI 2026
    PDF Slides

  3. [3]
    Exploiting the Sparseness of Control-Flow and Call Graphs for Efficient and On-Demand Algebraic Program Analysis
    G.K. Conrado, A.K. Goharshady, K. Kochekov, Y.C. Tsai, A.K. Zaher
    OOPSLA 2023
    PDF Slides

  4. [4]
    Parameterized Algorithms for Scalable Interprocedural Data-flow Analysis
    A.K. Zaher
    Master's thesis
    PDF Slides

  5. [5]
    Efficient Interprocedural Data-Flow Analysis Using Treedepth and Treewidth
    A.K. Goharshady, A.K. Zaher
    VMCAI 2023
    PDF

Last updated on: 01 September 2026