ayaka_photo

Ayaka Yorihiro (頼廣 采佳)
she/her
Gates Hall 407
ayaka@cs.cornell.edu
Github

About

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University working with Adrian Sampson in the Capra research group. I received a BA in Computer Science and Music from Swarthmore College in May 2020, where I was advised by Zachary Palmer.

I am generally interested in Programming Languages and Software Engineering. More specifically, my research explores ways to help programmers better understand and find bugs in their code. At Swarthmore, I studied context model designs and their effects on static higher-order program analyses. Some of my time at Cornell was spent tackling challenges in Runtime Verification, a dynamic analysis technique to check program executions against formally specified properties. These days, I'm working on tools for hardware development that take inspiration from software engineering.

Pronounciation Guide: My first name can be pronounced as either "eye-AH-ka" (most common) or "AH-ya-ka" (closer to the Japanese intonation). A nice work-around in pronouncing my last name is to say "You're a hero" fast.

Research

Publications

A FIRRTL Backend for the Calyx High-Level Accelerator Compilation Infrastructure. (OSDA '24)
Ayaka Yorihiro, Griffin Berlstein, Kevin Laeufer, and Adrian Sampson.
[PDF]

eMOP: A Maven Plugin for Evolution-Aware Runtime Verification. (RV '23)
Ayaka Yorihiro, Pengyue Jiang, Valeria Marqués, Benjamin Carleton, and Owolabi Legunsen.
[PDF] [Website]

A Set-Based Context Model for Program Analysis. (APLAS '20)
Leandro Facchinetti, Zachary Palmer, Scott F. Smith, Ke Wu, and Ayaka Yorihiro.
[PDF]

Teaching Experience

🏆 are courses where I won an Outstanding Teaching Award!

Cornell University

Instructor:

  • CS2110: Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures [SU24]

Teaching Assistant:

  • CS2110: Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures [FA23, SP24]
  • CS5154: Software Testing [FA21🏆, FA22]

Swarthmore College

Teaching Assistant:

  • CS73: Programming Languages [SP20]
  • CS46: Theory of Computation [SP20]
  • CS21: Introduction to Computer Science [FA18]

Grader:

  • CS41: Algorithms [F19]
  • CS31: Introduction to Computer Systems [SP18, SP19, FA19]
  • CS35: Data Structures and Algorithms [FA17]

Service

  • I am a Czar for Cornell CS's PhD Mentoring Program!
  • I am a Czar for the Cornell PL group's webpage!
  • I co-organized the Joint UT-Cornell Software Engineering Seminar in Summer 2022.
  • I was a student panelist for Cornell CS's 2022 Admitted Students Day.
  • I co-organized Cornell CS's 2021 Admitted Students Day.

Featured Posts


What is Runtime Verification? [Jun '25]
A little overview on one of my old research topics.

Look Back Review [Jan '25]
[Mild Spoilers] A small rant about a beautiful movie celebrating the joys and pains of passion.

So I taught a CS course over the summer... [Sep '24]
First-time instructor reflects on her summer teaching Data Structures and Java.

Remembering Jo sensei [Aug '24]
In honor of a dear mentor who earnestly believed in her students.

2024 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women Report [May '24]
Fourth-year grad student attends grad-school-meta-event to gain wisdom and make friends.

Grad School Application Tips from a Swat CS alum [Nov '20]
A compilation of things I learned from my own application process.

Check out the rest of my posts here!

Miscellany

Fun Facts

  • Outside CS, I am a big fan of many things: dogs and cats, the viola, singing, J-POP, board games, baking, memes, and more! Specifically, I enjoy listening to the wonderful band Official HIGE DANdism and the brilliant singer Ado. These days, I'm reading mystery novels by Keigo Higashino and Miyuki Miyabe.
  • My undergrad thesis in Music was written about Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a composer contemporary of Beethoven, and his role in cultivating the improvisatory Fantasie and Potpourri musical genres. You can read it here.
  • A performance that I did with some very cool people was featured in a video on Swarthmore's youtube channel!
    • The full first movement is featured here, accompanied by a rare publically available picture of me playing a musical instrument.
  • I have perfect pitch! This means that I can identify musical notes without any references.
  • I was on the Varsity Tennis team for all four years of high school, and somehow this surprised all of my friends in college.
  • If you take the first letter off of my last name, it becomes an element of a nonregular language - the language of palindromes!

Check out some of my other non-CS related posts here!