Software Engineering Commons^™

Can Llms Replace Manual Annotation Of Software Engineering Artifacts?, Toufique Ahmed, Premkumar Devanbu, Christoph Treude, Michael Pradel

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Experimental evaluations of software engineering innovations, e.g., tools and processes, often include human-subject studies as a component of a multi-pronged strategy to obtain greater generalizability of the findings. However, human-subject studies in our field are challenging, due to the cost and difficulty of finding and employing suitable subjects, ideally, professional programmers with varying degrees of experience. Meanwhile, large language models (LLMs) have recently started to demonstrate human-level performance in several areas. This paper explores the possibility of substituting costly human subjects with much cheaper LLM queries in evaluations of code and code-related artifacts. We study this idea by applying six …

A Functional Software Reference Architecture For Llm-Integrated Systems, Alessio Bucaioni, Martin Weyssow, Junda He, Yunbo Lyu, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The integration of large language models into software systems is transforming capabilities such as natural language understanding, decision-making, and autonomous task execution. However, the absence of a commonly accepted software reference architecture hinders systematic reasoning about their design and quality attributes. This gap makes it challenging to address critical concerns like privacy, security, modularity, and interoperability, which are increasingly important as these systems grow in complexity and societal impact. In this paper, we describe our emerging results for a preliminary functional reference architecture as a conceptual framework to address these challenges and guide the design, evaluation, and evolution of large …

Bigcodebench: Benchmarking Code Generation With Diverse Function Calls And Complex Instructions, T.Y. Zhuo, M.C. Vu, J. Chim, ..., David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Task automation has been greatly empowered by the recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) via Python code, where the tasks ranging from software engineering development to general-purpose reasoning. While current benchmarks have shown that LLMs can solve tasks using programs like human developers, the majority of their evaluations are limited to short and self-contained algorithmic tasks or standalone function calls. Solving challenging and practical tasks requires the capability of utilizing diverse function calls as tools to efficiently implement functionalities like data analysis and web development. In addition, using multiple tools to solve a task needs compositional reasoning by accurately …

Characterising Reproducibility Debt In Scientific Software: A Systematic Literature Review, Zara Hassan, Christoph Treude, Michael Norrish, Graham Williams, Alex Potanin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: In scientific software, the inability to reproduce results is often due to technical issues and challenges in recreating the full computational workflow from the original analysis. We conceptualise this problem as Reproducibility Debt (RpD). Much research has been performed to propose solutions to tackle these issues across various computational science disciplines. It is essential to identify and accumulate existing knowledge on reproducibility issues and state-of-the-art solutions so as to provide researchers and practitioners with information that enables further research activities and RpD management in practice. Objective: In the context of scientific software, we aim to characterise RpD by providing …

Prioritizing Speech Test Cases, Zhou Yang, Jieke Shi, Muhammad Hilmi Asyrofi, Bowen Xu, Xin Zhou, Donggyun Han, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) systems gain widespread acceptance, there is a pressing need to rigorously test and enhance their performance. Nonetheless, the process of collecting and executing speech test cases is typically both costly and time-consuming. This presents a compelling case for the strategic prioritization of speech test cases, which consist of a piece of audio and the corresponding reference text. The central question we address is: In what sequence should speech test cases be collected and executed to identify the maximum number of errors at the earliest stage? In this study, we introduce PRiOritizing sPeecH tEsT …

A Data-Driven Recommendation System For Selecting The Appropriate Mode Of Learning And Instructional Tools Based On Course Characteristics, Ayisha Manzoor

Theses

The rapid transformation of educational delivery methods during the COVID-19 pandemic required institutions to transition between online, hybrid, and offline learning approaches, creating both challenges and opportunities for educators and students. While online and hybrid learning modes ensured continuity, their effectiveness across different course types remained uncertain. This thesis addresses this gap by developing a datadriven recommendation framework that predicts Course Learning Outcome (CLO) achievement scores using regression, and recommends the most appropriate learning mode (online, hybrid, or offline) along with instructional tools based on course characteristics. This study analyzed 100 undergraduate and postgraduate courses from the College of Information …

Neurovig: Integrating Event Cameras For Resource-Efficient Video Grounding, Dulanga Weerakoon, Vigneshwaran Subbaraju, Joo Hwee Lim, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Spatio-Temporal Video Grounding (STVG) - the task of identifying the target object in the field-of-view that the language instruction refers to - is a fundamental vision-language task. Current STVG approaches typically utilize feeds from an RGB camera that is assumed to be always-on and process the video frames using complex neural network pipelines. As a result they often impose prohibitive system overheads (energy latency) on pervasive devices. To address this we propose NeuroViG with two key innovations: (a) leveraging on event streams from a low-power neuromorphic event camera sensor to perform selective triggering of the more energy-hungry RGB camera for …

Understanding The Oss Communities Of Deep Learning Frameworks: A Comparative Case Study Of Pytorch And Tensorflow, Yunqi Chen, Zhiyuan Wan, Yifei Zhuang, Ning Liu, David Lo, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Over the past two decades, deep learning has received tremendous success in developing software systems across various domains. Deep learning frameworks have been proposed to facilitate the development of such software systems, among which, PyTorch and TensorFlow stand out as notable examples. Considerable attention focuses on exploring software engineering practices and addressing diverse technical aspects in developing and deploying deep learning frameworks and software systems. Despite these efforts, little is known about the open source software communities involved in the development of deep learning frameworks. In this article, we perform a comparative investigation into the open source software communities of …

Cachealarm: Monitoring Sensitive Behaviors Of Android Apps Using Cache Side Channel, Jianwen Tian, Haoyu Ma, Debin Gao, Xiaohui Kuang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Malware attack has been a serious threat to the security and privacy of both individual and corporation users of the Android platform. Business entities seek to protect themselves by means of monitoring privacy-related sensitive behaviors conducted on company-issued Android devices. However, due to Android’s own access control and privacy protection policies, this is difficult to be done with third-party apps using only normal privileges. Existing works proposed using side-channel readings from leaky APIs and system virtual files to speculate runtime app behaviors, which could be unreliable due to future system updates (that ban exploited resources), hardware jittering, etc. In this …

Adapting Knowledge Prompt Tuning For Enhanced Automated Program Repair, Xuemeng Cai, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automated Program Repair (APR) aims to enhance software reliability by automatically generating bug-fixing patches. Recent work has improved the state-of-the-art of APR by fine-tuning pre-trained large language models (LLMs), such as CodeT5, for APR. However, the effectiveness of fine-tuning be-comes weakened in data scarcity scenarios, and data scarcity can be a common issue in practice, limiting fine-tuning performance. To alleviate this limitation, this paper adapts prompt tuning for enhanced APR and conducts a comprehensive study to evaluate its effectiveness in data scarcity scenarios, using three LLMs of different sizes and six diverse datasets across four programming languages. Prompt tuning rewrites …

Adaptive Deviation Learning For Visual Anomaly Detection With Data Contamination, Aanindya Sundar Das, Guansong Pang, Monowar Bhuyan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Visual anomaly detection targets to detect images that notably differ from normal pattern, and it has found extensive application in identifying defective parts within the manufacturing industry. These anomaly detection paradigms predominantly focus on training detection models using only clean, unlabeled normal samples, assuming an absence of contamination; a condition often unmet in real-world scenarios. The performance of these methods significantly depends on the quality of the data and usually decreases when exposed to noise. We introduce a systematic adaptive method that employs deviation learning to compute anomaly scores end-to-end while addressing data contamination by assigning relative importance to the …

Revisiting Sentiment Analysis For Software Engineering In The Era Of Large Language Models, Ting Zhang, Ivana Clairine Irsan, Thung Ferdian, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software development involves collaborative interactions where stakeholders express opinions across various platforms. Recognizing the sentiments conveyed in these interactions is crucial for the effective development and ongoing maintenance of software systems. For software products, analyzing the sentiment of user feedback, e.g., reviews, comments, and forum posts can provide valuable insights into user satisfaction and areas for improvement. This can guide the development of future updates and features. However, accurately identifying sentiments in software engineering datasets remains challenging.This study investigates bigger large language models (bLLMs) in addressing the labeled data shortage that hampers fine-tuned smaller large language models (sLLMs) in software …

Evaluating Software Development Agents: Patch Patterns, Code Quality, And Issue Complexity In Real-World Github Scenarios, Zhi Chen, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, AI-based software engineering has progressed from pre-trained models to advanced agentic workflows, with Software Development Agents representing the next major leap. These agents, capable of reasoning, planning, and interacting with external environments, offer promising solutions to complex software engineering tasks. However, while much research has evaluated code generated by large language models (LLMs), comprehensive studies on agent-generated patches, particularly in real-world settings, are lacking. This study addresses that gap by evaluating 4,892 patches from 10 top-ranked agents on 500 real-world GitHub issues from SWE-Bench Verified, focusing on their impact on code quality. Our analysis shows no single …

Tla+ For All: Model Checking In A Python Notebook, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

TLA+ is widely recognized for its effectiveness in specifying and verifying concurrent and distributed systems. However, for educators and practitioners, barriers to adoption include installation complexity and tooling setup. In the proposed presentation, we demonstrate a lightweight, easily shareable, and fully reproducible approach to running TLA+ in a Python notebook hosted on Google Colab without requiring new tools or custom Jupyter kernel development. By creating an environment where users can experiment with TLA+ models instantly, we lower these barriers and demonstrate the suitability for education and outreach.

Density Boosts Everything: A One-Stop Strategy For Improving Performance, Robustness, And Sustainability Of Malware Detectors, Jianwen Tian, Wei Kong, Debin Gao, Tong Wang, Taotao Gu, Kefan Qiu, Zhi Wang, Xiaohui Kuang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the contemporary landscape of cybersecurity, AI-driven detectors have emerged as pivotal in the realm of malware detection. However, existing AI-driven detectors encounter a myriad of challenges, including poisoning attacks, evasion attacks, and concept drift, which stem from the inherent characteristics of AI methodologies. While numerous solutions have been proposed to address these issues, they often concentrate on isolated problems, neglecting the broader implications for other facets of malware detection. This paper diverges from the conventional approach by not targeting a singular issue but instead identifying one of the fundamental causes of these challenges, sparsity. Sparsity refers to a scenario …

The Role Of Surprisal In Issue Trackers, James Caddy, Christoph Treude, Markus Wagner, Earl T. Barr

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Software development creates and relies on a large volume of information, yet the volume of this information can make it challenging for developers to maintain an overview of all goings-on that a team and external actors contribute to a project. We posit that unexpected or “surprising” events could serve as important signposts amidst this information overload. These unexpected events may indicate underlying anomalies or emergent situations that require immediate attention. To explore this premise, our study leverages the concept of ‘surprisal’ from information theory to identify and quantify these unusual occurrences from the issues and pull requests of popular …

Bridging Expert Knowledge With Deep Learning Techniques For Just-In-Time Defect Prediction, Xin Zhou, Donggyun Han, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Just-In-Time (JIT) defect prediction aims to automatically predict whether a commit is defective or not, and has been widely studied in recent years. In general, most studies can be classified into two categories: 1) simple models using traditional machine learning classifiers with hand-crafted features, and 2) complex models using deep learning techniques to automatically extract features from commit contents. Hand-crafted features used by simple models are based on expert knowledge but may not fully represent the semantic meaning of the commits. On the other hand, deep learning-based features used by complex models represent the semantic meaning of commits but may …

Wf-Ppg: A Wrist-Finger Dual-Channel Dataset For Studying The Impact Of Contact Pressure On Ppg Morphology, Matthew Yiwen Ho, Hung Manh Pham, Aaqib Saeed, Dong Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a simple optical technique widely used in wearable devices for continuous cardiac health monitoring. However, the quality of PPG signals, particularly their morphology, is influenced by the contact pressure between the skin and the sensor. This variability in signal quality complicates complex tasks that rely on high-quality signals, such as blood pressure and heart rate variability estimation, making them less reliable or even impossible. To address this issue, we present a novel dataset (termed WF-PPG) comprising PPG signals from the wrist measured under varying contact pressures, along with high-quality PPG signals from the fingertip captured simultaneously. Data …

Learning An Interpretable Stylized Subspace For 3d-Aware Animatable Artforms, Chenxi Zheng, Bangzhen Liu, Xuemiao Xu, Huaidong Zhang, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Throughout history, static paintings have captivated viewers within display frames, yet the possibility of making these masterpieces vividly interactive remains intriguing. This research paper introduces 3DArtmator, a novel approach that aims to represent artforms in a highly interpretable stylized space, enabling 3D-aware animatable reconstruction and editing. Our rationale is to transfer the interpretability and 3D controllability of the latent space in a 3D-aware GAN to a stylized sub-space of a customized GAN, revitalizing the original artforms. To this end, the proposed two-stage optimization framework of 3DArtmator begins with discovering an anchor in the original latent space that accurately mimics the …

Towards Resource-Efficient Reactive And Proactive Auto-Scaling For Microservice Architectures, Hussain Ahmad, Christoph Treude, Markus Wagner, Claudia Szabo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Microservice architectures have become increasingly popular in both academia and industry, providing enhanced agility, elasticity, and maintainability in software development and deployment. To simplify scaling operations in microservice architectures, container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes feature Horizontal Pod Auto-scalers (HPAs) designed to adjust the resources of microservices to accommodate fluctuating workloads. However, existing HPAs are not suitable for resource-constrained environments, as they make scaling decisions based on the individual resource capacities of microservices, leading to service unavailability, resource mismanagement, and financial losses. Furthermore, the inherent delay in initializing and terminating microservice pods hinders HPAs from timely responding to workload fluctuations, …

Ptm4tag+: Tag Recommendation Of Stack Overflow Posts With Pre-Trained Models, Junda He, Bowen Xu, Zhou Yang, Donggyun Han, Chengran Yang, Jiakun Liu, Zhipeng Zhao, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Stack Overflow is one of the most influential Software Question & Answer (SQA) websites, hosting millions of programming-related questions and answers. Tags play a critical role in efficiently organizing the contents on Stack Overflow and are vital to support various site operations, such as querying relevant content. Poorly chosen tags often lead to issues such as tag ambiguity and tag explosion. Therefore, a precise and accurate automated tag recommendation technique is needed. Inspired by the recent success of pre-trained models (PTMs) in natural language processing (NLP), we present PTM4Tag+, a tag recommendation framework for Stack Overflow posts that utilize PTMs …

Heartdj - Music Recommendation And Generation Through Biofeedback From Heart Rate Variability, Egemen Şahin

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This study investigates the integration of real-time physiological data with AI-generated music to enhance emotional well-being, stress regulation, and focus, using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as a biomarker of autonomic function. Conducted in two phases—Stable Audio Open (SAO) and Suno (SUNO)—the research evaluates biofeedback-driven music interventions across varying daily music-listening habits.

In the SAO phase, short AI-generated instrumental tracks were compared with Spotify recommendations and guided meditation. Modest HRV improvements were observed in biofeedback conditions, but participants noted emotional limitations, citing short track lengths and abrupt transitions.

The SUNO phase addressed these limitations with longer, more complex AI-generated compositions combined …

Dashar: An Implementation Of Augmented Reality Technology For Automotive Applications, Trevor D. Brown

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Since the advent of the modern automobile, manufacturers have provided means of tracking various critical data points associated with automobile operation, with the most prominent and standardized method being the instrument cluster. These data points include, but are not limited to, automobile speed, engine speed, fuel level, oil temperature, radiator (water) temperature, and battery charge. While this data is updated in real-time as the automobile is running, traditional instrument clusters cannot be modified or adjusted to the automobile driver’s needs, unless extensive after-market modifications are made. These modifications can be expensive, and require great understanding of the automobile’s assembly.

Alongside …

Computing In The Commonwealth: Specialized Education In Computer Science And Information Technology For High School Students In Virginia – An Environmental Scan, Amy Corning, Jonathan D. Becker, Jon Graham, James Carrigan, Keisha Tennessee

ICRE Publications

Over the past two decades, Virginia has invested substantially in STEM education, in part through specialized programs focused on computer science and information technology (CS/IT). This study represents the first effort to identify Virginia’s specialized secondary CS/IT programs and examine them collectively. Findings from the statewide environmental scan indicate that the programs are delivered through a wide variety of institutional structures, including Governor’s STEM Academies, Governor’s Schools, specialty centers, and academies, but most often through Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers. Programs tend to be concentrated in metropolitan areas, and some rural divisions may not be served. The programs provide …

Rotary Operations Management & Automation Platform (Romap): Modernizing Attendance Tracking And Data Submission For Rotary Clubs, Zaineel Mithani

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

As Technical Lead of the Rotary Operations Management & Automation Platform (ROMAP), my Honors contribution focused on developing a Bluetooth Low Energy proximity-based attendance system enabling automatic, hands-free member check-ins. I researched and selected beacon hardware, designed RSSI-based distance calculation algorithms, and implemented platform-specific background processing for iOS and Android, achieving 97% detection accuracy. Beyond this Honors component, I architected the complete backend infrastructure including a Node.js API with 20+ endpoints, PostgreSQL database with Prisma ORM, and JWT authentication. I also developed a novel GPT-4 Vision automation system that intelligently populates web forms through computer vision, achieving 95% success rate …

Towards Smart Farming: Image-Based Crop Health Assessment And Disease Diagnosis Using Deep Learning Techniques, Kristina Botova

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Accurate crop monitoring is essential for optimizing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security. This study presents a comprehensive deep learning framework for image crop type recognition, health status prediction, and disease detection using multiple Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. The proposed approach uses open-source datasets consisting of five crop types (apple, corn, grape, potato, tomato), varying health conditions, and common diseases. By deploying specialized CNN architecture focused on each task, the system achieves a high accuracy of 99.25% in classifying crop types, identifying health status, and detecting specific diseases. Compared to a single CNN model, the use of the proposed …

The Future Of Code Style: Learning With Gamified Online Tools, Jacob C. Tjaden

Honors Theses

High-quality code is universally pursued by software developers, and one of the most effective indicators of code quality is code style. However, code style is difficult to teach, particularly to introductory students and programmers who benefit most. In this project, we aim to investigate how online tools can improve and teach Python code style, as well as identify the role of gamification in the process. We build an online platform called Fishy that combines code style appraisal tools and utilizes gamification concepts. Our platform incorporates educational metrics such as a code analysis score and targeted quizzes to assess user performance. …

Csc36000 - Modern Distributed Computing Assignment 2, Saptarashmi Bandyopadhyay

Open Educational Resources

This assignment is designed to help the student identify and mitigate common errors in Distributed Computing such as race conditions and reaching consensus, as well as reflecting on how Distributed Computing concepts apply to their class project.

Cmc Thesis Chatbot, Luis Gomez

CMC Senior Theses

This GitHub repo is a senior thesis for Claremont McKenna College; it is a thesis about theses. The project is an interactive RAG-based chatbot that helps students, researchers, and faculty explore Claremont McKenna College senior theses. The goal was to create a domain-specific chatbot to show that it is possible to combat the limitations of AI, including hallucinations, outdated data, and lack of domain expertise. The website link is:

CMCThesisChatbot

Understanding Physiological Responses For Intelligent Posture Detection Using Wearable Technology, Chaitanya Vardhini Anumula, Tanvi Banerjee, Anuradha Oak

Celebration of Undergraduate & Graduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Materials

This study investigates the physiological impact of Iyengar yoga at the pose-level using EmbracePlus wearable smartwatch, for data recording and personalized yoga pose detection for tracking.