Software Engineering Commons^™

Fixdrive: Automatically Repairing Autonomous Vehicle Driving Behaviour For $0.08 Per Violation, Yang Sun, Christopher M. Poskitt, Kun Wang, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are advancing rapidly, with Level-4 AVs already operating in real-world conditions. Current AVs, however, still lag behind human drivers in adaptability and performance, often exhibiting overly conservative behaviours and occasionally violating traffic laws. Existing solutions, such as runtime enforcement, mitigate this by automatically repairing the AV's planned trajectory at runtime, but such approaches lack transparency and should be a measure of last resort. It would be preferable for AV repairs to generalise beyond specific incidents and to be interpretable for users. In this work, we propose FixDrive, a framework that analyses driving records from near-misses or law …

Intention Is All You Need: Refining Your Code From Your Intention, Qi Guo, Xiaofei Xie, Shangqing Liu, Ming Hu, Xiaohong Li, Lei Bu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code refinement aims to enhance existing code by addressing issues, refactoring, and optimizing to improve quality and meet specific requirements. As software projects scale in size and complexity, the traditional iterative exchange between reviewers and developers becomes increasingly burdensome. While recent deep learning techniques have been explored to accelerate this process, their performance remains limited, primarily due to challenges in accurately understanding reviewers’ intents. This paper proposes an intention-based code refinement technique that enhances the conventional comment-to-code process by explicitly extracting reviewer intentions from the comments. Our approach consists of two key phases: Intention Extraction and Intention Guided Revision Generation. …

Scenario-Driven And Context-Aware Automated Accessibility Testing For Android Apps, Yuxin Zhang, Sen Chen, Xiaofei Xie, Zibo Liu, Lingling Fan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile accessibility is increasingly important nowadays as it enables people with disabilities to use mobile applications to perform daily tasks. Ensuring mobile accessibility not only benefits those with disabilities but also enhances the user experience for all users, making applications more intuitive and user-friendly. Although numerous tools are available for testing and detecting accessibility issues in Android applications, a large number of false negatives and false positives persist due to limitations in the existing approaches, i.e., low coverage of UI scenarios and lack of consideration of runtime context. To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a scenario-driven exploration …

Development Of Fuzzy Ontology For Explainable Artificial Intelligence For Decision-Making In Fuzzy Environment, Pavel Kosov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

In modern artificial intelligence systems, there is an acute need to understand the decision-making logic of "black box" algorithms. Our research proposes an innovative method for increasing the transparency of such systems through the formalization of fuzzy explanatory mechanisms. We have developed an extension of existing ontological approaches by introducing the concept of fuzziness into the structure of explanatory properties, which allows overcoming the fundamental limitations of traditional XAI methods. The proposed formalization is based on the theory of collective mental models and principles of fuzzy logic, providing a more accurate reflection of uncertainty and subjectivity in expert knowledge. Our …

Cascading Effects: Analyzing Project Failure Impact In The Maven Central Ecosystem, Mina Shehata

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Abstract—This study examines failure propagation patterns within the Maven Central ecosystem, a critical software de- pendency repository, through comprehensive analysis of dependency networks using the Goblin framework. Our dual-sampling methodology, investigating both top dependencies and random libraries, revealed two distinct failure propagation patterns that pose significant risks to ecosystem stability. Core infrastructure failures, particularly evident in cases like the AWS SDK family with 429,800 total dependencies, create immediate and widespread disruption, affecting an average of 20,402 dependent projects and propagating through dependency chains averaging 90.80 levels deep.

Our analysis of peripheral projects reveals their significant cascading effects, with higher average …

Simplifying 3d Printing Using Natural Language Processing, Jared E. Rosenberger

Undergraduate Theses

3D printing is a crucial technology with many applications in different fields. To be able to use this technology to its full extent, expertise in computer aided design (CAD) technology and 3D modeling is required. Many people interested in 3D printing do not have this expertise and thus cannot build custom models, and are consequently forced to buy them instead. Natural language processing (NLP) is one tool that can vastly simplify 3D modeling for those lacking CAD experience. Using NLP, someone can simply dictate what they want to be able to print, and a computer can then build a 3D …

Towards Testing, Detecting, And Debloating Insecure Components In Android Applications, Zicheng Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The Android ecosystem’s openness and extensibility have fueled its dominance in the mobile market, but they also broaden the attack surface of applications by introducing insecure or redundant methods. Vulnerabilities arise from various sources, including insecure API usage, code cloning, and feature bloat, especially from unneeded components introduced during development. To address these challenges, this dissertation presents a systematic, three-phase pipeline that transitions seamlessly from vulnerability discovery to clone-based detection and, ultimately, to dynamic mitigation through runtime debloating. Each phase builds upon the insights and limitations of the previous, collectively forming a practical approach to improving Android app security.

In …

The Use Of Call Graphs And Deep Learning To Improve Software Testing, Ziad A. Al-Sharif, Hemanth G. Chintala, Safwan Omari

Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Conferences

Software testing is a critical part of software development, it is essential for preventing failures and enhancing software quality attributes. However, the testing process can be costly and time-consuming, often involving a large number of test cases. Over time, the accumulation of redundant and overlapping test cases can complicate and lengthen the testing time. To address these challenges, this paper utilizes graph similarity and deep learning techniques to optimize test suites. It uses call graphs from test cases to identify redundant and similar test cases. A machine learning model is used to calculate and predict the similarity scores between these …

A Study Of Preconditions And Postconditions As Design Constraints For Llm Code Generation, Luke Newcomb

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly advanced automated code generation, but current methods predominantly rely on natural language descriptions. This approach encounters challenges when handling complex, class-level software generation tasks due to inherent ambiguity and under-specification. Few studies have investigated how more formal software engineering constraints, such as explicit preconditions and postconditions, influence class-level generation tasks. This work addresses this gap through a structured evaluation of six state-of-the-art LLMs generating software implementations from systematically designed class-level specifications. Results demonstrate that incorporating explicit design constraints significantly boosts initial generation accuracy (measured via the pass@k metric), particularly in Python but also in …

Advancing Devsecops In Smes: Challenges And Best Practices For Secure Ci/Cd Pipelines, Jayaprakashreddy Cheenepalli, John Hastings, Khandaker Mamun Ahmed, Chad Fenner

Research & Publications

This study evaluates the adoption of DevSecOps among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), identifying key challenges, best practices, and future trends. Through a mixed methods approach backed by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, we analyzed survey data from 405 SME professionals, revealing that while 68% have implemented DevSecOps, adoption is hindered by technical complexity (41%), resource constraints (35%), and cultural resistance (38%). Despite strong leadership prioritization of security (73%), automation gaps persist, with only 12% of organizations conducting security scans per commit. Our findings highlight a growing integration of security tools, particularly API security …

Use Of Search Tools In Software Development: A Study Of Microservice-Based Team Projects, Yi Meng Lau, Christian Michael Koh, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Universities are increasingly integrating real-world projects into software engineering curricula to preparestudents for careers involving complex concepts like Microservices Architecture (MSA). Students frequentlystruggle with such concepts within limited class time and turn to various search tools and online resources for additional help. Search tools are also widely used in the software development industry. While search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, can provide quick solutions, they pose the risk of information overload. Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, offer the advantage of delivering more precise answers. Studies have shown that LLMs can comprehend codes, assist in system architectural design, and …

Verification Of Bit-Flip Attacks Against Quantized Neural Networks, Yedi Zhang, Lei Huang, Pengfei Gao, Fu Song, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the rapidly evolving landscape of neural network security, the resilience of neural networks against bit-flip attacks (i.e., an attacker maliciously flips an extremely small amount of bits within its parameter storage memory system to induce harmful behavior), has emerged as a relevant area of research. Existing studies suggest that quantization may serve as a viable defense against such attacks. Recognizing the documented susceptibility of real-valued neural networks to such attacks and the comparative robustness of quantized neural networks (QNNs), in this work, we introduce BFAVerifier, the first verification framework designed to formally verify the absence of bit-flip attacks against …

Verifying Timed Properties Of Programs In Iot Nodes Using Parametric Time Petri Nets, Étienne André, Jean-Luc Béchennec, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, Sebastien Faucou, Didier Lime, Dylan Marinho, Olivier H. Roux, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The analysis of timed properties of programs is a complex task, as it is highly dependent on both the software and the hardware. In this work, we propose a framework for modeling with timed formal models the execution of programs, taking into account the micro-architecture of the machine on which it executes. We model both the program, at the instruction set architecture level, and the hardware, including the processor micro-architecture, using time Petri nets. Our implementation uses the ARM Cortex-M instruction set architecture and a hardware architecture representative of microcontrollers used in IoT nodes. The whole translation is fully automated …

Ada-Gen: Iterative And Incremental Generation Of Full-Stack Apps For Learning Agile/Devops Software Development Practices, Nguyen Binh Duong Ta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To learn Agile/DevOps practices effectively, students need to apply them in an actual software development project. This is challenging if students are mostly from non-computing backgrounds and they do not have time in the curriculum to learn programming and related tools. Therefore, it is important to help students who do not possess programming foundations to develop fully functional software during the process of learning Agile/DevOps concepts. We noted that existing low-code/no-code app development platforms have not been designed to teach Agile/DevOps practices. On the other hand, recent AI-based tools for code generation such as GitHub Copilot have been built mainly …

How Developers Interact With Ai: A Taxonomy Of Human-Ai Collaboration In Software Engineering, Christoph Treude, Marco A. Gerosa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Artificial intelligence (AI), including large language models and generative AI, is emerging as a significant force in software development, offering developers powerful tools that span the entire development lifecycle. Although software engineering research has extensively studied AI tools in software development, the specific types of interactions between developers and these AI-powered tools have only recently begun to receive attention. Understanding and improving these interactions has the potential to enhance productivity, trust, and efficiency in AI-driven workflows. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy of interaction types between developers and AI tools, identifying eleven distinct interaction types, such as auto-complete code …

One-For-All: Towards Universal Domain Translation With A Single Stylegan, Yong Du, Jiahui Zhan, Xinzhe Li, Junyu Dong, Sheng Chen, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a novel translation model, UniTranslator, for transforming representations between visually distinct domains under conditions of limited training data and significant visual differences. The main idea behind our approach is leveraging the domain-neutral capabilities of CLIP as a bridging mechanism, while utilizing a separate module to extract abstract, domain-agnostic semantics from the embeddings of both the source and target realms. Fusing these abstract semantics with target-specific semantics results in a transformed embedding within the CLIP space. To bridge the gap between the disparate worlds of CLIP and StyleGAN, we introduce a new non-linear mapper, the CLIP2P …

Scuzer: A Scheduling Optimization Fuzzer For Tvm, Xiangxiang Chen, Xingwei Lin, Jingyi Wang, Jun Sun, Jiashui Wang, Wenhai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The concept of Deep Learning (DL) compiler was proposed to deploy DL models more efficiently on diverse hardware through optimization techniques. As one of the most popular DL compilers, TVM incorporates three levels (high-level, schedule, and low-level) of optimizations, which can inadvertently introduce code logic bugs and build failure bugs. Among these optimizations, scheduling optimization is the core component of DL compilers, which ensures the acceleration of models on all devices. However, the existing works only focus on the testing of high-level and low-level optimizations in TVM, fail to take the most important and challenging intermediate scheduling optimization layer into …

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 …

Overcoming Motor Imagery Bci Illiteracy: Adaptive Decoding And Knowledge Transfer In Eeg-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces, Zaid Shuqfa

Dissertations

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), also known as brain–machine interfaces (BMIs), enable direct communication between the brain and external devices without the involvement of peripheral nerves or muscles. Among various BCI paradigms, motor imagery (MI)–based BCIs are particularly appealing due to their intuitive, cue-independent nature, allowing users to issue control commands at will. MI–BCIs hold substantial promise for improving the quality of life of individuals with motor impairments, as well as enhancing hands-free control for healthy users. However, their widespread adoption remains limited by challenges such as low signal-to-noise ratio, inter- and intra-subject variability, and the need for frequent calibration. These challenges …

Code Of Faith: Programming Spirituality In The Digital Age, Caleb Martin

Senior Honors Theses

With the increasing pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives, it is critical to consider the potential effects on an individual's religious practices and beliefs from software applications developed within a religious framework. This thesis delves into the relationship between software development and religious experiences, examining the manner in which the creation, operation, and application of religious technology can mold and impact an individual's spiritual development. This thesis aims to inform the implementation of technologies with a nonsecular application, ensuring that they are developed with a deep respect for the nuances of religious experience. The findings of this study will …

Ai And Prompt Engineering For Library Discovery Services, James Day

Publications

We have seen the rise of generative artificial intelligence in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide answers to users’ queries. Services such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini have quickly become accepted and adopted in the research process. Now library vendors are adding artificial intelligence (AI) to their discovery services to allow for natural language queries to produce generative results. However, the AI model used for discovery services differs from normal LLMs in a significant way that has several positive benefits, but it affects how prompts are written. Library discovery services use a model called Retrieval- Augmented Generation …

Gamescope, Jake Rankin, Luis Garza, Brain Lujan, Mauricio Rebaza Figueroa

Posters - 2025

Video games have grown exponentially since their debut in the late 20th century. Despite the widespread digitalization and advancements within the gaming community marked by a transition from physical discs to digital downloads and many more major improvements, the lack of an efficient, multipurpose application for reviews remains prevalent. When designing GameScope, we wanted to tackle the key problem of the absence of a multi-platform gaming review system. Gamers currently lack a popular platform to easily find game reviews and get personalized recommendations. Our aim is to create a space where gamers can share their experiences and explore new games …

Mente -Mental Health Tracking App, Vu Han

Posters - 2025

Mental health plays a crucial role in overall well-being, yet many digital tools in this space are either overly complex or lack usercentered design. Mente is a streamlined, web-based application created to support daily mental health engagement through simplicity and ease of use.

•Purpose: To provide a minimal, intuitive platform for users to reflect on their emotional well-being and develop healthier habits over time.

•Core Features:

• Mood tracking with visual trends

• Journaling for personal reflection

• Goal setting and progress tracking

• Health assessment for self-awareness

• Analytics for self-reflection •Design Focus: A clean, distraction-free interface that emphasizes …

Holdfast War Archives, Albert Mendez

Posters - 2025

Holdfast War Archives is a full-stack website designed for the competitive community of the 19th-century multiplayer roleplaying game, Holdfast Nations at War. This project caters to the North American (NA) melee competitive scene, offering tools to enhance player engagement, maintain records, track performance, and facilitate competitive matchmaking.

Applying Software Engineering Black-Box Methods For Testing Machine Learning Models, Timothy Elvira

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This dissertation proposes researching an approach to incorporate and align Software black-box testing methods into Machine Learning (ML) applications, specifically in the context of computer vision models. Typically, testing methods within Software Engineering (SE) encompass a range of test types that assess levels of a software system, such as Unit, Integration, Functional, and System testing [1]. The testing spectrum offers two perspectives on the system: black-box, where the system’s code is hidden, and white-box, where the system's code is exposed for testing. Software Quality pairs testing with requirements, in a many-to-one relationship, to ensure proper validation of the software system. …

Dps: Design Pattern Summarisation Using Code Features, Najam Nazar, Sameer Sikka, Christoph Treude

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automatic summarisation has been used efficiently in recent years to condense texts, conversations, audio, code, and various other artefacts. A range of methods, from simple template-based summaries to complex machine learning techniques -- and more recently, large language models -- have been employed to generate these summaries. Summarising software design patterns is important because it helps developers quickly understand and reuse complex design concepts, thereby improving software maintainability and development efficiency. However, the generation of summaries for software design patterns has not yet been explored.Our approach utilises code features and JavaParser to parse the code and create a JSON representation. …

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 …

Democratic Training Against Universal Adversarial Perturbations, Bing Sun, Jun Sun, Wei Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite their advances and success, real-world deep neural networks are known to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Universal adversarial perturbation, an inputagnostic attack, poses a serious threat for them to be deployed in security-sensitive systems. In this case, a single universal adversarial perturbation deceives the model on a range of clean inputs without requiring input-specific optimization, which makes it particularly threatening. In this work, we observe that universal adversarial perturbations usually lead to abnormal entropy spectrum in hidden layers, which suggests that the prediction is dominated by a small number of “feature” in such cases (rather than democratically by many …

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 …