Congratulating Sherlock on Securing MBIE Endeavour Fund for his Research!

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We are thrilled to congratulate Assoc. Prof. Sherlock Licorish for securing a one-million-dollar research grant from the MBIE Endeavour Fund! The funding will drive important research on improving software quality, a field with profound implications for industries worldwide. As the principal investigator, Sherlock is supported by Assoc. Prof. Markus Wagner, from the Monash University and Prof. Steve MacDonell, from Victoria University of Wellington. At this stage, Sherlock is seeking enthusiastic researchers to join his team. The opportunities include a fully funded postdoctoral fellowship and fully funded PhD student position. Find below more information about the research and the available opportunities.

From left to right: Assoc. Prof. Sherlock Licorish, Prof. Steve MacDonell, Assoc. Prof. Markus Wagner

Overview

Software developers are increasingly using publicly hosted and LLM-generated coding solutions. While such interfaces provide useful and rapid coding solutions, evidence suggests that code derived from these mediums often contain violations/errors which may result in future software failures when reused. Accordingly, increasing research effort is dedicated to mitigating the pitfalls of reusing publicly hosted and LLM-generated code. The work proposed here will address such efforts.

This project aims to develop and deliver AI-inspired software violation detection and repair algorithms to support New Zealand software developers in their efficient and rapid delivery of high-value, reliable and secure software. We will also package our algorithms to support the upskilling of novice developers.

 Sounds exciting? If you are a strong coder, fluent in Java and/or Python, and have a strong interest in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), you may be interested in this opportunity, which is funded by a 2024 MBIE Smart Ideas Endeavour Fund project.

We are recruiting for funded positions at the PhD and Postdoc/Research Fellow levels, with the positions hosted at University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand).

Contact:

Sherlock Licorish, sherlock.licorish@otago.ac.nz

Markus Wagner, markus.wagner@monash.edu

Steve MacDonell, stephen.macdonell@vuw.ac.nz