From the VERSEN board - VERSEN sponsors 2020
16 Dec 2020
VERSEN membership is free for individuals, mainly because our institutions provide yearly sponsoring. We want to thank our "Platinum" sponsors for 2020, namely NWO-I Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and TU Delft for providing the bulk of the budget. Among other things, from this money we organize the SEN symposium, and the visual story with the manifesto. Furthermore we have received broad support from our "Gold" sponsors: Universiteit Twente, TU Eindhoven, Universiteit Utrecht, Vrije Universite...
From the VERSEN board - Strengthening the VERSEN community
16 Dec 2020
Over the last years, the VERSEN board members have been actively working on improving the visibility of software research in Dutch computer science. However, we would like to involve the full VERSEN community more in our activities. In January, we plan to have a meeting to discuss what can be done to achieve this. I invite in particular all young software researchers in the Netherlands to join this meeting, because we would like to hear your voice. If you would like to join, write an email to Mari...
CfP: Special Issue IEEE Software on Collaborative Aspects of Open Data in Software Engineering
16 Dec 2020
With this theme issue of IEEE Software, we invite papers with a focus on the collaborative aspects of open data in software engineering and how these aspects can help or hinder practitioners within both private and public organizations to exploit the potential benefits. We ask for original articles that provide new ideas, methods, and insightful experiences that can guide and support software engineers in the collaboration and co-development of open data. We invite in-depth case studies, experi...
Awards - SSBSE 2020 Best Paper Award for TU Delft Researchers
16 Dec 2020
In October 2020, Pouria Derakhshanfar, Xavier Devroey, and Andy Zaidman from the Delft University of Technology received a best paper award for their paper "It is not Only About Control Dependent Nodes: Basic Block Coverage for Search-Based Crash Reproduction" at the 12th International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering. This paper revisits the approach level and branch distance heuristics widely used for white-box test generation. The paper is available at http://resolver.tudelft.n...
Next events - CfP: WAIN’21 - 1st Workshop on AI Engineering: Software Engineering for AI
16 Dec 2020
Co-located with the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2021 Important dates: Submission Deadline: Tue 21 Jan 2021 (AoE time) Acceptance Notification: Mon 22 Feb 2021 Camera Ready: Fri 12 Mar 2021 Workshop: One or two days between May 29th and June 4th, 2021, Virtual ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In development and implementation of AI-based systems , the main challenge is not to develop the...
PhD defenses - dr. Siamak Farshidi successfully defended thesis about Multi-criteria Decision Making in Software Production
16 Dec 2020
Dr. Siamak Farshidi defended his thesis successfully on the 2nd of December about multi-criteria decision making in software production. His promotors are Prof. dr. Sjaak Brinkkemper and Prof. dr. Hajo Reijers from Utrecht University, co-promotor dr. Slinger Jansen. The committee was made up of renowned VERSEN members, Prof. dr. Gabriele Keller, Prof. dr. Alex Telea, Prof. dr. Patricia Lago, Prof. dr. Diomidis Spinellis, among others. For more information, please see https://siamakfarshidi.nl/the...
From the VERSEN board
16 Dec 2020
In October, we had our first meeting with the advisory board. The members provided useful feedback on the software manifesto. They recognise the challenges that we listed, but also gave advise on how to translate the manifesto in the language of our stakeholders. In the mean time, we have also talked with more people about the manifesto. We now have a draft document that relates the software technology challenges to AI. Further, the Secure Software Alliance is actively helping us to make companies...
Awards and prizes - 2nd prize KNVI Master thesis award for Lukas Miedema
16 Dec 2020
Last November, Lukas Miedema received one of the two 2nd prizes of the KNVI Thesis prizes for Informatics for his thesis called QuickInterp - JIT-like performance in a cross-platform cross-CPU way. Lukas did his Master thesis at the University of Twente, under the supervision of Marieke Huisman and Tom van Dijk. In this movie, Lukas gives a brief explanation about the work he did in his Master thesis. More information about the thesis of Lukas can be found at: https://fmt.ewi.utwente.nl/educati...
Announcement VERSEN PhD Awards
01 Oct 2020
To further promote and encourage excellence in software engineering research, VERSEN has introduced the VERSEN PhD Thesis Awards. The awards are indications of excellence that can support talent in future applications in the current competitive academic climate. The awards are supported by NWO and promoted at ICT.Open. The Award can only be awarded to graduate students who have obtained their degree from a Dutch institute of higher academic learning between September 1st, 2019, until August 31st, 202...
Announcement VERSEN Msc Thesis Awards
01 Oct 2020
To further promote and encourage excellence in software engineering research, VERSEN has introduced the VERSEN Msc Thesis Awards. The awards are indications of excellence that can support talent in future applications in the current competitive academic climate. The awards are supported by NWO and promoted at ICT.Open. The Award can only be awarded to graduate students who have obtained their degree from a Dutch institute of higher academic learning between September 1st, 2019, until August 31st, 202...
Utrecht University Looking for an Assistant Professor Software Engineering
01 Oct 2020
The department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University is recruiting four or more Assistant Professors in Information and Computing Sciences. The vacancy text has just been published on the UU website. We are searching for candidates with expertise in the area of software engineering. It would also be great if the candidate has affinity for some of Utrecht's core areas, such as game technology, artificial intelligence, and big data.
New people - Michel Albonico joins the VU as postdoc researcher on Robotics Software
01 Oct 2020
Michel Albonico started working as postdoc researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He will work in the NWO-funded project titled "Green Tactics for Robotics Software", together with Ivano Malavolta and a team of VU students. Michel will (i) apply software repository mining techniques for extracting architectural tactics for energy-efficient robotics software and (ii) empirically validate the extracted tactics via a series of quantitative studies involving the execution of robotic missions in t...
New people - Tanjina Islam joins the VU as Junior teacher
01 Oct 2020
Tanjina has joined the S2 research group of the VU as a Junior Teacher. Prior to joining, she obtained a Master degree in Computer Science, specializing in Software Engineering and Green IT from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research interests include: Software Architecture, Sustainable Software Design, Mobile Applications Development, Algorithms, Machine Learning and Data Science.
Awards - MOBILESoft 2020 Best Paper Award for VU researchers
28 Sep 2020
At the 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft 2020), the Best Paper Award was awarded to the study "Leave my Apps Alone! A Study on how Android Developers Access Installed Apps on User's Device" by Gian Luca Scoccia, Ibrahim Kanj (a VU Master student), Ivano Malavolta (member of the S2 group at the VU), and Kaveh Razavi (former-VU assistant professor). The paper and replication package are available here: https://github.com/S2-group/mobilesoft-2020...
PhD defences - Tukaram Muske defended his thesis on postprocessing static analysis alarms
28 Sep 2020
Tukaram Muske has successfully defended a PhD thesis on postprocessing static analysis alarms. Static analysis, which detects errors in the source code without actually running it, is an important automated program analysis technique to find common programming errors and report on points of interest that could be errors. Considering the effectiveness and usefulness of static analysis, a wide range of static analysis tools have been developed. However, these tools are known to generate a larg...
Next events - Call for Papers: Collective Knowledge in Software Engineering
28 Sep 2020
Two VERSEN members, Ivano Malavolta and Alexander Serebrenik are among the co-editors of the upcoming special issue of Empirical Software Engineering on collective knowledge in software engineering. Knowledge-sharing platforms, such as Stack Overflow, GitHub, Twitter, and Slack, have changed how developers share knowledge and seek information on the web. These platforms store a significant amount of collective knowledge that is contributed by a large and rapidly-evolving group of participants. For...
New people & guests - Alexander Serebrenik appointed a Full Professor Social Software Engineering
28 Sep 2020
Starting from July 1, 2020 Alexander Serebrenik has been appointed a Full Professor Social Software Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research goal is to facilitate evolution of software by taking into account social aspects of software development. His work tends to involve theories and methods both from within computer science (e.g., theory of socio-technical coordination; methods from natural language processing, machine learning) and from outside of computer science (e.g., or...
Awards - Best paper award at SEAA 2020 to RUG researchers
28 Sep 2020
Yikun Li, Mohamed Soliman, and Paris Avgeriou from the University of Groningen won a best paper award at Euromicro SEAA 2020 for their work on “Identification and Remediation of Self-Admitted Technical Debt in Issue Trackers”. The worked investigated to what extent software developers admit technical debt in issue trackers as they do in source code comments (e.g. "to do/fix"). It also studies in detail how developers identify and resolve technical debt in (Jira) issues. Preprint: http://www.cs.rug...
Next events - Software Cost Estimation Challenge
28 Sep 2020
Estimating software development effort is an essential part of getting new or improved software products to its intended end-users. An effort estimate sets the expectations of the end-users as to when the software will be ready and what it will cost. Multiple sources show that estimating software development effort has a bad track-record, despite over fourty years of research on good software estimating practices. The IWSM conference is devoted to promoting research and experience on good softw...
Awards - Distinguished paper award for study of code review bots
28 Sep 2020
Paper studying the effects of code review bots co-authored by Alexander Serebrenik (Eindhoven) and his Brazilian and American colleagues has been selected to receive an IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution 2020 (ICSME). In this paper Mairieli Wessel (University of São Paulo, Brazil), Alexander Serebrenik, Igor Wiese (Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Campo Mourão, Brazil), Igor Steinmacher (Universidade Tecnológica...
New people & guests - Vadim Zaytsev is a new Associate Professor in Twente
28 Sep 2020
Vadim Zaytsev, also known as grammarware, is appointed as Associate Professor of Software Evolution at the Formal Methods & Tools research group at the University of Twente. He started in July 2020. Vadim is getting back to academia after spending several years developing compilers and software migration tools in the industry, analysing and transforming porftolios full of code in languages like COBOL, PL/I, HLASM and many 4GLs, as well as acting as a Chief Science Officer at Raincode Labs, encoura...
Next events - Farewell Symposium Jos Baeten
28 Sep 2020
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) of the NWO Institute Organisation and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam organize a symposium on the occasion of the retirement of Jos Baeten as general director of CWI and professor of theory of computing of ILLC on Thursday 1 October 2020. Due to restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus, such as social distancing, space is limited at the venue. In order to comply with these restrictions, only ...
Research of Tukaram Muske in AG Connect
28 Sep 2020
The PhD research of Tukaram Muske (Eindhoven) is featured in AG Connect: Nieuwe wegen door het oerwoud van statische code analyse-alarmen (article by Eveline Meijer). The article is in Dutch and the full text is only available to subscribers, here it is: https://www.agconnect.nl/artikel/nieuwe-wegen-door-het-oerwoud-van-statische-code-analyse-alarmen
Projects - New Erasmus Mundus Joint Master on Software Engineering for the Green Deal (SE4GreenDeal)
28 Sep 2020
The Software and Sustainability Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has been awarded a new Erasmus Mundus Joint Master on "Software Engineering for the Green Deal (SE4GreenDeal)". The Master is a joint program with Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland) and the University of L'Aquila (Italy). It will prepare the next generation software professionals to create and manage software solutions that address sustainability goals by design. The program will start in academic year ...
New people & guests - New Professor in Eindhoven: Michel Chaudron
28 Sep 2020
Michel Chaudron has been appointed a Full Professor in Software Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. Prior to this, he has been a full professor at the Software Engineering division of the joint department of Computer Science and Engineering of Chalmers and Gothenburg University in Sweden. Prof. Chaudron’s research interests are in the design and modeling of software/system architectures, and in the knowledge sharing that is needed for software development. His research involves both...