Dr Daniel Alencar da Costa

Bio

Dr. Daniel Alencar da Costa is Lecturer of Software Engineering at the University of Otago, New Zealand since January 2019. Daniel received a BE from University Centre of Pará, Brazil and a MS and a PhD from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. His research has been published in top software engineering venues, such as IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Empirical Software Engineering Journal, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, and in the proceedings of the Foundations of Software Engineering Conference, among others. Daniel has served as a reviewer for these same journals and is on the program committee of various conferences and workshops including the Mining Software Repositories Conference. Previously, Daniel worked as a software engineer and team lead in a company that provides banking solutions for Latin American banks.

Research

Daniel’s research aims to build a solid empirical knowledge of Software Engineering to help practicians take informed decisions. With an increasing corpus of empirical knowledge (i.e., data) about software engineering, the development of tools to aid developers building software naturally comes as another focus of my research. For example, Daniel uses machine learning algorithms to learn from historical data and help developers to identify bottlenecks within the development process.


Dr Craig Anslow

Bio

Dr. Craig Anslow is a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering within the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington. Craig also teaches a course on the MSc in Software Engineering Programme within the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, UK. Craig was a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Middlesex University, London, UK working on the EU FP7 VALCRI project (criminal intelligence). Craig was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Agile Software Engineering Research Group within the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary, Canada working with Professor Frank Maurer. Craig received a PhD in Software Engineering from the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 2013 and was supervised by James Noble, Stuart Marshall, and Robert Biddle. Prior to that Craig worked as a software developer in Wellington and Palo Alto, CA, USA for various organizations.

Research

Dr Craig Anslow’s research focuses on developing analytics software applications for people in the areas of software engineering, digital health, and managing environmental and transportation data, using various techniques ranging from visualiztion, virtual reality/augmented reality, and human-centred design processes. In terms of software engineering research he focuses on Empirical Studies of Programming, Evaluation of Programming Languages and Tools, and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. He co-leads the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research group at Victoria University of Wellington.


Professor Robert Biddle

Bio

Robert Biddle is Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada; also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington. He has degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Education, and has worked in industry, education, and research. He was born in the UK, educated in Canada, and lived for many years in New Zealand, working at Victoria University of Wellington. His research has always concentrated on human aspects of software, including programming language design and software development process, and more recently on computer security. He has awards for research, teaching, and graduate mentorship. Robert is a Fellow of the New Zealand Computer Society, and a Commonwealth Scholar.

Research

Robert’s interests are all aspects of human aspects of software. In the 1990s, he worked with Profs. Ewan Tempero and James Noble, and his focus was on software reuse, especially in aspects of programming language design that supported more general and safe reuse. In the 2000s, his focus was on agile software development, especially on collaboration in development teams, including product owners and UI designers, as well as developers. This work continues, and considers how agile practices have changed over the 20 years since they started to become widespread. Also in the 2000s, much of Robert’s research work has been on human aspects of cybersecurity. In particular, he and his students and colleagues have contributed important work on authentication, on education, and on security decision-making. He feels that software and organizational design must better support users to ensure online security. In his research work, Robert has collaborated with industry and government in New Zealand, Canada, and the USA.


Dr Kelly Blincoe

Bio

Kelly Blincoe is a Senior Lecturer of Software Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Kelly received a BE from Villanova University, USA; an MS from Pennsylvania State University, USA; and a PhD from Drexel University, USA. Her research has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Empirical Software Engineering Journal, Information and Software Technology Journal, and in the proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering, Foundations of Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering Conference, among others. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Systems and Software and the Empirical Software Engineering Journal. She is on the program committee of various conferences and workshops including the International Conference on Software Engineering, the Mining Software Repositories Conference, and the Requirements Engineering Conference. Previously, she worked as a software engineer, team lead, and proposal manager at Lockheed Martin.

Research

Kelly’s research is mainly in collaborative software development with a focus on the socio-technical aspects and coordination between developers. She employs a variety of both qualitative and quantitative empirical research methods including developing new methods and tools, data mining, repository analysis, social network analysis, interviews, and surveys.

Industry

Much of Kelly’s research has been done in collaboration with industry and aims to solve real world problems. For example, her research has resulted in methods to help software developers become aware of when they need to coordinate their development work to prevent code conflicts, duplicate work and other issues common on distributed teams.


Dr Etienne Borde

Bio

Dr. Etienne Borde is a Senior Lecturer within the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, since April 2023. Etienne received an Engineering degree and a Master of Science from Ecole Centrale de Nantes (Nantes, France), a PhD from Telecom Paris – Institut Poltechnique de Paris (Paris, France) and a habiliation (HDR – Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) from Sorbonnes Université (Paris, France). Prior to joining the University of Canterbury, Etienne has been a “Maître de Conférences” (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer) at Telecom Paris – Institut Polytechnique de Paris (Paris, France), an invited researcher at the Software Engineering Institute (Pittsburgh, USA) and an invited professor at the Nanyang Technological Institute (Singapore).

Research

Etienne’s research focuses on the development of methods and tools for software engineering in (real-time) critical application, such as applications from the transportation domain. Model-driven engineering, real-time scheduling, model-checking, and discrete optimization are the types of techniques Etienne has studied, combined, or contributed to in his research work. Etienne has co-supervised 7 PhD students, published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, and contriubted to open-source projects. Etienne also contributed to the SAE – AADL standard (AADL – Architecture and Analysis Design Laguage), and most of his work has been conducted in collaboration with industry, including companies deeply involved in software engineering for critical real-time systems, such as THALES, Safran, Valeo, and Alstom.


Dr Judy Bowen

Bio

Judy Bowen is Senior Lecturer in the department of Computer Science at the University of Waikato. She is also the Associate Dean Academic.

Research

Judy’s research is in the area of the design and implementation of safety-critical interactive systems. She is particularly interested in the integration of informal user interface design methods with formal software development processes. She is also currently investigating the use of wearable technology to support workers in hazardous environments.


Jim Buchan

Bio

Jim Buchan is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Software Engineering Research Lab at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. He graduated with a MSc (Hons) in experimental physics from the University of Auckland in 1981 and with a Graduate Diploma in Business Information Systems in 1991. Having spent 13 years in industry, 7 of those with his own consultancy, he rejoined academia in 2006 where he has held a number of positions of responsibility at AUT. He has published a number of papers in internationally refereed conferences, mainly in the areas of requirements engineering, agile methods and roles, and software metrics. He is the current secretary of the Agile Auckland professional network and an active member of the local software development community.

Research

Jim’s main areas of research relate to the broad aim of improving software development. This involves deepening our empirical understanding of software development processes, practices, tools and theory with a view to applying these insights, coupled with the opportunities offered by new and emerging technologies, to advance the state of software development. He studies teams of developers and their practices in their place of work, to deepen our understanding of what is effective, in what context, and what is the evidence. He applies theory from a range of disciplines, such as team cognition, to explain the observations, and predict useful changes to improve team effectiveness, code quality, and application quality. Jim is also passionate about designing evidence-based software engineering courses that will prepare the next generation of software engineers to be prepared to work in and shape an industry that will realise the opportunities offered by the rapid pace of advancement.

Industry

Most of Jim’s research is based on collaborating with industry partners. He has been involved in sharing research findings and providing support for software professionals for most of his academic career. He has been an invited presenter at a number of local organisations as well as professional networks such as Agile Auckland.


Associate Professor Tony Clear

Bio

Tony Clear is an Associate Professor and Co-Director within the Software Engineering Research Lab at Auckland University of Technology, and in the Department of IT and Software Engineering. He is active in research within the global software engineering and computer science education communities. He holds positions as an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), for the journal Computer Science Education, and ACM Inroads for which he is also a regular columnist and Editorial Board member. With Professor Daniela Damian of University of Victoria Canada he is working on a Royal Society of NZ International Leaders Fellowship Grant titled – “Leading the Way in Software Ecosystems for NZ”. Tony is on the steering committee for ICGSE and has chaired or served on the programme committee for conferences such as ICGSE, EASE, ITiCSE, ICER, ACE, FIE, CITRENZ, APRES, ECIS, SIESC, and reviewed for journals such as TSE, IST, JSS, JSEP, IJEE, CLEIej. He supervises and has examined doctoral students in Global Software Engineering, CS Education and interdisciplinary topics, and has chaired or participated in several doctoral consortia.

Research

Active collaboration with colleagues, students and technology have been a unifying and enduring focus, as has been a research focus on software development. How is software designed and built? How do software developers work? How do collaborative technologies support their work practices? How can the continuum from novice to expert programmer best be navigated? How are advances in global collaboration changing the way software is being developed?

Primary Research Topics: Global Software Engineering, Global Software Development, Collaborative Computing, Global Virtual Teams, and Computer Science Education Research.

Industry

Prior to joining academia, Tony had 14 years in industry as a software developer and manager. At AUT he has supervised and coordinated the BCIS R&D capstone Project in which teams of students work to deliver results for external clients. His supervision and research involves active collaboration with practitioners and colleagues such as at Lero – The Irish Software Research Centre – with a view that practice informs theory and vice versa.


Associate Professor Jens Dietrich

Bio

Jens is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the Victoria University of Wellington. He has a MSc in Mathematics and a PhD (doctor rer nat) in Computer Science, both from the University of Leipzig in Germany, obtained in 1992 and 1996, respectively. Jens is a member of the ACM.

Research

Jens’ research interests are in the areas of software modularisation, evolution, static analysis and programming language security. His contributions include over 50 peer-reviewed publications and numerous open source projects and developer tools, such as the Massey Architecture Explorer.

Industry

Jens has worked in industry between 1996 and 2003. During this time he worked on some of the first large-scale enterprise level projects using object-oriented technologies for organisations such as Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Kleinwort Benson, the Bavarian State Bank and Dresdner Bank, including freelance work for European and US clients while he was based in Namibia between 1999-2003.

At Massey, he has been involved in numerous research projects with industry, including work with and for Kiwiplan, Unlimited Reality, Solnet Solutions and Landcare Research. Since 2014, he has worked closely with Oracle Labs in Brisbane on scalable static program analysis for bug and vulnerability detection, and has received several rounds of funding from Oracle Inc for this work.

Jens frequently talks at developer meetups and user groups, and occasionally publishes in trade magazines.


Associate Professor Matthias Galster

Bio

Matthias Galster is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences, mainly in the areas of software architecture and software processes. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society. He regularly serves as a reviewer for premier international software engineering journals and conferences, and is involved in organizing events at top software engineering venues.

Research

Matthias is interested in improving the way we develop high quality software, with a focus on software requirements engineering, software architecture and design, software development processes and practices, and empirical software engineering. His work ranges from studying human/social aspects, knowledge acquisition and sharing to investigating code-related issues. Matthias uses qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand what developers do, what they are struggling with and how to help developers in their daily work. Furthermore, Matthias analyses software artifacts and repositories to identify architecture-relevant information and investigates ways to make that information available to developers. Most of his work is conducted in close collaboration with software organizations and practitioners in New Zealand and overseas to ensure relevance of studied problems and rigor of proposed solutions.


Dr Rita Garcia

Bio

Dr Rita Garcia has worked over fifteen years in the film industry in DevOps and Release Engineering, supporting and establishing good software engineering practices at Pixar Animation Studio, Weta Digital, and Marvel Studios. Her experience motivated her PhD field of research in Computer Science Education (CSE) to support diversity in the Computer Science and Software Engineering disciplines.

Research

Her research focuses on helping Computer Science (CS) students build problems-solving skills that will help them organise and plan programming solutions. She developed a pedagogy that introduces introductory programming students to the software design process earlier in their studies. This pedagogy was applied within Canvas, a Learning Management System (LMS), so that students could be supported in a learning environment with minimal supervision. She also investigates the presentation of programming assignments designed to help CS students identify the problem’s goals and provide additional assistance to students to better understand the problem. Her work also focuses on students’ collaboration processes performed during group work. The goal of this work is to help reduce language during group work that might exclude women and underrepresented minorities from pursuing careers in the Tech field.

Industry

Currently, Dr Garcia works at Unity as a Senior Software Engineer and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington. She remains involved in the academic community, promoting diversity and developing teaching strategies that can support students’ development of collaborative software development skills.


Dr Fabian Gilson

Bio

Fabian graduated with a Master Degree in Computer Science at the University of Namur (Belgium) in 2005. He spent a couple of years in the industry as a software developer and analyst, working for a consulting company. He then worked as a teaching assistant, doing his PhD studies part time and graduate in 2015. He spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher and assistant lecturer at the University of Namur before being appointed lecturer at the University of Canterbury in 2017. He serves as regular reviewer in international journals (e.g., Information Systems, Computers in Industry) and international workshops and conferences (e.g., ICSA, ECSA, TechDebt).

Research

Fabian’s research aims at bridging machine learning techniques and Agile software development practices. His current projects include approaches to (collaboratively) generate models from user stories (i.e. natural language descriptions), extract design decisions from chat-based communication, improving the management of technical debt with architecture-level metrics. Fabian is also active into enhancing the teaching and learning of software and model-driven engineering (including software language engineering) through evidence-based research and teaching.

Fabian’s prior works focused on model transformations and how to trace requirements back into software architecture models for which a set of domain specific languages were implemented in the Eclipse EMF ecosystem.

Industry

On top of a prior experience within the consulting industry, as final year project coordinator at the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Fabian is also in contact with many industries, both Christchurch-based and New Zealand-wide, to support them with time-bound research projects involving final year software students meant to explore innovative solutions and develop proof-of-concepts influencing their tomorrow’s software products.


Dr Simon Hoermann

Bio

Simon Hoermann is Lecturer at the University of Canterbury’s College of Engineering. He was awarded BSc in Applied Computer Science, and a MSc in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering, both from Free University of Bozen, Italy. His PhD was based on research at the University of Otago in Information Science. His work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He has worked as co-chair and panel member at several international conferences and serves in the board of directors in his subfield.

Research

Simon’s research is in the wider range of applied software engineering, including the development of applications for health and wellbeing, positive computing, training simulations, game development, virtual and augmented reality and human interface technology.

Industry

Simon has worked in collaboration with many domain expert from a variety of different industries and other academic disciplines for over 15 years such as medical doctors, psychologists, designers, neuroscientists, mathematicians, web-service providers, emergency first responders, occupational therapists, game developers and educators. He has work experience in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe in charitable, private and public sectors.


Dr Michael Homer

Bio

Michael is a Lecturer in Software Engineering in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington. He received his PhD in 2014 for work with the Grace educational programming language, for which he built a compiler and a novel hybrid visual-text user interface, and began as a lecturer in 2016. He is a longstanding developer of the research-driven Linux distribution GoboLinux, and has worked professionally in web and mobile development and system administration.

Research

Michael’s research is primarily in programming languages, particularly in two strands: 1) visual or block-based programming and multiple-representation environments, with a focus on systems that sit at a boundary where visual representations make accessible understanding or abilities that could otherwise be out of reach; and 2) systems for language variation for building domain-specific or pedagogical sub-languages within a host language, and features for enabling that. His work includes investigating atypical programming paradigms or combinations for areas they may bring value, such as concatenative or dataflow programming. He also works in programming education, HCI, and operating systems topics, especially where they cross over with PL.


Dr Sapna Jaidka

Bio

Sapna holds the position of Teaching Fellow within the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Waikato. Having relocated to New Zealand in 2014, she achieved her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waikato in 2020.

Research

Sapna’s research primarily focuses on formal methods and Human-Computer Interaction. Her work is dedicated to developing processes, methodologies, techniques, and tools tailored for modeling, designing, and analyzing safety-critical interactive systems, with the overarching goal of enhancing their safety and reliability. Additionally, she maintains a keen interest in Cybersecurity, with a focus on the security challenges within Industrial IoT and the impact of human factors on digital information security. Through her research, Sapna aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of these critical areas and advance solutions to address emerging challenges.


Dr Diana Kirk

Bio

Diana is a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland. She received an Honours degree in Mathematics from the Open University of Great Britain, an M.Sc. in Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems from the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Auckland. Her background includes 17 years in the software industry (C programming, software process design, software quality management and consulting) and 14 years in academia.

Research

Diana conducts research in software code quality. This interest stems from her 17 years in industry as C programmer (9 years), shareholder/director (4 years) and software quality manager (4 years). She’s a member of the SOFTER research group at UoA, headed by Assoc. Prof. Ewan Tempero.

Diana is also interested in computing education. Her current investigations concern the teaching of code quality in text-based programming courses in senior secondary schools. She’s a member of the CELT research group at UoA, headed by Assoc. Prof. Andrew Luxton-Reilly.

Last of Diana’s interests is situated in software practices. This interest also stems from her time in industry. Her interest lies in acquiring evidence on best operating limits for software development practices as a pre-requisite to providing decision support for software projects. She’s currently collaborating with Dr. Kelly Blincoe and Dr. Sarah Cowie on a project looking at contextual factors.


Dr Jemma König

Bio

Jemma König is a member of the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Waikato. Jemma started her undergraduate study at the University of Waikato in 2012, graduating with a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences with first class honours in 2016. After this she undertook a Ph.D. in Computer Science, which she completed in 2019.

Research

Jemma’s research centres on the use of IoT and wearable devices for health and workplace applications. This includes the use of physiological data for cognitive workload classification, wearable sensors for movement analysis, and the semantic modelling of homogeneous physiological data. Jemma has also continued her PhD research, which centres on the automation of language tools and resources for L2 English, and the automated generation of pseudowords for English and te reo Māori.


Dr Sherlock A Licorish

Bio

Sherlock A. Licorish is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Applied Software Projects in the Department of Information Science at University of Otago, New Zealand. Having spent nearly 8 years in software and network engineering industry-based roles, he graduated with MSc (hons) and PhD degrees in Computer and Information Sciences from Auckland University of Technology (AUT). Sherlock has published over 75 papers in journals and internationally-refereed conferences focussed on software teams, software methods and processes, software tools and end users’ feedback. He is an active member of the software engineering and information systems development community.

Research

Sherlock’s research aims to provide recommendations for improving the software development process by understanding, explaining and predicting, what, when, where and how methods, tools and techniques should be applied to provide software that is reliable, efficient and secured. He studies software developers’ actions during software development by analysing software artefacts and repositories to understand what motivates people to work, and the basis for the occasions when they do not perform as they are expected to perform. Sherlock also investigates customers and end-users role in software maintenance and software evolution through their feedback, and has developed tools in support of both developers and end-users. Techniques: Beyond developing software, Sherlock employs data mining, data visualization, statistical analysis and other quantitative methods (e.g., social network analysis and sentiment analysis) in his work. He has used qualitative methods in his research, including qualitative forms of content analysis and dilemma analysis. Sherlock also conducts surveys and interview-based studies.

Industry

Sherlock has performed research work in collaboration with Dunedin-based organisations, and has also provided insights for software development practitioners nationally.


Professor Stephen G. MacDonell

Bio

Stephen MacDonell is Professor of Software Engineering at the Auckland University of Technology and Professor in Information Science at the University of Otago, both in New Zealand. Stephen was awarded BCom(Hons) and MCom degrees from the University of Otago and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. His research has been published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, ACM Computing Surveys, Empirical Software Engineering, Information & Management, Information and Software Technology, the Journal of Systems and Software, and the Project Management Journal, and he has presented his research findings at numerous international conferences. He is a Member of the IEEE, the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM, and serves on the Editorial Board of Information and Software Technology. He is also Theme Leader for IT, Data Analytics and Modelling in New Zealand’s National Science Challenge Science for Technological Innovation.

Research

Stephen is a behavioural software engineer, meaning that he is particularly interested in software teams and their practices. His research is focused on software analytics and their visualisation, and how this can support decision-making regarding practice selection as well as project planning, forecasting and management. He is also committed to the use of reliable evidence to underpin software engineering activities, and develops new ways to capture, model, apply and interpret software-related data.

Industry

For 25 years Stephen has been working alongside software development organisations to identify how they can better understand and improve their processes, products and services. In particular he investigates how individuals and organisations can best use analytics and evidence to inform their decision making regarding teams and their practices.


Dr Miguel Morales

Bio

Miguel has a PhD in Computer Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He worked as an assistant professor at the College of Science at the UNAM (2010-2017). In parallel, he spent several years working in industry as Business Analyst, SQA, and Project and Product Manager. He founded and directed a software startup until 2017, when he joined the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) as a Lecturer.

He has been member of such major standardization bodies as the Object Management Group and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7 Software and Systems Engineering subcommittee. He is also involved as a reviewer for international journals and conferences.

Research

Miguel’s main research area is Software Quality, particularly, software process improvement and product management. Miguel’s most recent research line has been focused on Gamification in Software Engineering education. He is also interested in IT Project Management, Standardization and Databases.


James Noble

Bio

James Noble is a creative programmer and researcher based in Wellington, and Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of IT Professionals NZ (FIITPNZ) and the British Computer Society (FBCS), a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (SMACM), and a Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (MIEEE). He was awarded the Dahl-Nygaard Senior Award in 2016, and held a James Cook Fellowship in 2015 and 2016, and an Amazon Research Award in 2022. After completing Bachelors and Doctorate degrees at VUW, Professor Noble worked in Sydney, first at the University of Technology, Sydney, and then at the Microsoft Research Institute, Macquarie University. Professor Noble returned to VUW in 1999, was Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London and King’s College, London, and Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington from 2003-2022.

Research

James Noble’s research centres around software design. This includes the design of the users’ interface, the parts of software that users have to deal with every day, and the programmers’ interface, the internal structures and organisations of software that programmers build and maintain. His research is coloured by a long standing interest in object oriented approaches to design, and topics he has studied range from aliasing and object ownership, design patterns, agile methodology, security, via usability, visualisation and computer music, to postmodernism and the semiotics of programming.

Industry

James Noble has undertaken research and consulting for companies and agencies including Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM and the GCHQ.


Dr Panos Patros

Bio

Panos received his Bachelors in Informatics and Telecommunications from the University of Athens in 2010. He worked for four years as a Software Engineer, Consultant and Academic Tutor before moving to Canada and the University of New Brunswick for graduate school. He completed his Master’s in Computer Science in 2014 and his PhD in 2018, both as a member of the IBM/UNB Centre of Advanced Studies – Atlantic. While in Canada, he taught CS courses (after completing a Diploma in University Teaching in 2014) and participated in industrial R&D projects.

Research

Panos, an Official Member of Engineering New Zealand, is interested in various aspects of Software Engineering but in particular, Self-Adaptation in Clouds, Language Runtimes and Embedded Systems, focusing on the Testing and Satisfaction of Nonfunctional Requirements as well as Systems’ Security. He joined the Department of Computer Science of the University of Waikato in July 2018 as a Lecturer; soon after, he started the Oceania Researchers in Cloud and Adaptive-systems (ORCA) lab. Additionally, he is serving as an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.


Dr David J. Pearce

Bio

David graduated with a PhD from Imperial College London in 2005, and took up a lecturer position at Victoria University of Wellington, NZ. David’s PhD thesis was on efficient algorithms for pointer analysis of C, and his techniques have since been incorporated into GCC. His work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences and he is an editor for the journal “Science of Computer Programming”.

Research

David has a broad range of research interests in programming languages, compilers and static analysis. He also has experience in graph algorithms and related scientific computations. Since 2009, David has been developing the Whiley Programming Language which is designed specifically to simplify program verification (see http://whiley.org).

David has previously interned at Bell Labs, New Jersey, where he worked on compilers for FPGAs; at IBM Hursely, UK, where he worked with the AspectJ development team on profiling systems; and, at Philips Research, UK, where he worked on a WAP browser for Windows CE.

Industry

Over the years, David has worked with various organisations in New Zealand and Australia, including Transpower, Gallagher Fuel Systems, Innaworks, Magritek, Creative HQ and Oracle Research Labs in Brisbane.


Associate Professor Alex Potanin

Bio

Alex is originally from Russia with background in mathematics. He obtained his PhD from Victoria University of Wellington and after working with two small startups embarked on a career in academia in 2006.

Research

Alex’s research interest lies in programming languages and empirical software engineering. One of his early works involved the study of object graphs discovering power law relationship among objects which goes against the common belief that software is hierarchically built from “LEGO brick-like” components. He published extensively on ownership and immutability that are now firmly incorporated into new programming languages such as Rust. His current work revolves around the security and how programming languages can help enforce large scale design decisions as shown by the Wyvern programming languages available on GitHub and developed by Jonathan Aldrich (at CMU) and Alex Potanin (at VUW).

Industry

Alex worked with small start ups such as Innaworks to help develop ground breaking compiler technologies, advised larger companies such as Mozilla Corporation improving performance evaluation of their browser and helping advance the Rust programming language, as well as holding large grants from companies such as Oracle or government agencies such as Royal Society’s Marsden Grant or various government departments. Alex is very happy to help any NZ companies to help improve their reliance on specific programming languages or help improve their security and overall architectural assurances using the latest research developments.


Dr Shawn Rasheed

Bio

Shawn Rasheed is a Lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Massey University, New Zealand. Shawn has a BSc from the University of Queensland, Australia; an MSc in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and a PhD from Massey University, New Zealand.

Research

Shawn’s research interests are in the areas of programming languages, program analysis, software security and quality.

Industry

Before joining academia, Shawn worked in the financial sector and has experience designing and developing large time series databases for econometric/regulatory uses. He was also the technical lead for a CGAP/World Bank project for a clearing and settlement system for electronic payments.


Professor Steve Reeves

Bio

Steve Reeves is Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Software Engineering at the University of Waikato. He was awarded a BSc(hons) in Mathematics and Computing by the University of Birmingham, and subsequently a PhD, also from Birmingham. His PhD was on automated theorem-proving (which involved developing algorithms to perform mathematical proofs efficiently). In the years since then, he has worked at the University of Essex and the University of London, and his worked has moved into formal methods (the use of mathematical modelling to design and analyse software) and more general software engineering (particularly model-based texting, safety-critical device modelling and analysis, blockchain). He has published in the main international journals in his area (e.g. Formal Aspects of Computing, Science of Computer Programming), published at, and served on the programme committees for, many international conferences, and co-Chaired such conferences along with workshops in many areas of software engineering.

Research

Steve’s recent work has centred around: the modelling and analysis of safety-critical devices (mainly infusion pumps for drugs); formalising and analysing distributed, cloud-based computing environments; the use of blockchain for the storage of sensitive cultural artefacts, where trust is an important component. The main theme to his work has always been the mathematical modelling of systems, their well-considered structure (for example, the use of compositionally), and the use of model-checking and proof to assure correctness and high-quality for software-based systems.

Industry

Steve has undertaken research with companies and industry-linked research organisations and projects including Fisher and Paykel, Gallaghers, various small “start-ups”, Data61 (formerly NICTA), FDA.


Associate Professor Tony Savarimuthu

Bio

Associate Professor Tony Savarimuthu lectures and coordinates COMP101, the introductory paper in Information Science. Tony has a background of working as a Software Engineer and a Lecturer in India.

Research

His main research interests are in the areas of multi-agent systems (particularly normative multi-agent systems) and Software Engineering. Recently, he has also been active in the area of Information Systems.His PhD thesis in the area of multi-agent systems investigated mechanisms for norm emergence and norm identification in artificial agent societies. His thesis was placed in the Dean’s exceptional thesis list for Otago’s School of Business in 2011.


Dr. Pankajeshwara (Pankaj) Sharma

Bio

Pankaj is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, with the GIScience team in the Department of Environment. His work focuses on the design and development of a web-based Data Sovereignty tool to safeguard geospatial datasets of New Zealand Māori. Pankaj has worked in academia and industry both in Fiji and New Zealand. Prior to undertaking his PhD studies, Pankaj was a lecturer in computing in Fiji for about three years. He has also worked in the industry for four years as a software developer, within both public and private sector organisations.

Research

Pankaj’s research work has primarily focused on understanding decision-making processes and decision-rationale in large-scale software development projects. He has developed tools that help enhance our understanding of decision-making in open-source software development. His works have employed text mining and natural language processing techniques to analyse publicly available data repositories (e.g., Python email archives) to mine valuable decision-related information. Pankaj also has an interest geospatial data security – a topic he undertook during his master’s study in Fiji. Pankaj’s work situated at the intersection of Software Engineering and Information Systems disciplines appear in well-known conferences such as ICSE and ICIS. His publications can be found on Google Scholar.


Associate Professor Roopak Sinha

Bio

Associate Professor Roopak Sinha is a Director of the Software Engineering Research Centre (SERC) at AUT. He is also currently the Associate Head of School, Learning & Teaching, in AUT’s School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences (SECMS). Roopak was the founding Head of the Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE@AUT) Department in SECMS and served as HoD from 2020-22. He has over 15 years of research experience, is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and has previously held research positions at The University of Auckland, New Zealand and INRIA, France.

Research

Roopak’s primary research interest is Systematic, Standards-First Design of Next-Generation Cyber-Physical Systems and Software applied to domains like Internet-of-Things (IoT), Edge Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems, Home and Industrial Automation, and Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is an active member and the sole Universities NZ representative at the IT-015 Software and Systems Engineering committee of Standards Australia, which oversees the creation and adoption of numerous ISO standards within Australia and New Zealand. Roopak also works with New Zealand companies to adopt industry standards into their software and to systematically reduce standards-compliance costs..


Dr Craig Sutherland

Bio

Craig Sutherland is a Lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He received a BSc (Hons) and a PhD from the University of Auckland. Previously, he worked as a software developer and team lead in the finance, education, healthcare industries.

Research

Craig’s research interests are at the intersection of programming education, software engineering, and robotics. He is interested in how people use tools to interact with technology and develop the software to control it, especially for robotics and autonomous systems. Currently, he is studying how children learn to program and how different programming environments influence their learning.


Dr Amjed Tahir

Bio

Research

Amjed undertake research in software engineering, with special interest in software (source code) quality and maintenance. He’s also interested in open source software and how to improve the quality of such systems. Most of his research is empirical in nature, and he’s a big supporter of the open science initiative, and most of his research use open data, contribute publicly accessible data, and ensure that our research software are accessible as open source.


Associate Professor Ewan Tempero

Bio

Ewan Tempero is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. He graduated from the University of Otago, New Zealand, with a B.Sc., (Honours) in Mathematics in 1983 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, USA, in 1990. He has published over 170 papers in journals and internationally-refereed conferences, mainly in the areas of software design analysis, evaluation and advice, particularly through the use of software metrics. He is a Member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.

Research

Ewan is interested in all aspects of creation of software products. His main research is investigating how to reliably and objectively assess the quality of software designs. Poor design choices usually lead to higher total cost of ownership of the software product, usually in terms of higher costs for making future changes. Identifying poor choices, or even better, avoiding making them in the first place, would reduce costs and improve productivity. Ewan uses code analysis techniques to identify what design choices developers have made and uses this to understand what the consequences of those choices are. He also uses empirical study techniques such as surveys and interviews to determine how developers made design decisions. To support his research Ewan has created the Qualitas Corpus, a curated collection of open-source Java systems that is used for by researchers around the world.

Industry

Ewan has provided technology transfer support and advice to industry partners throughout his career. He is particularly interested in helping organisations understand the quality of the software they produce, and how they make design decisions, at both the detailed and architecture level.


Dr Valerio Terragni

Bio

Valerio Terragni is a Lecturer in Software Engineering at The University of Auckland, New Zealand since February 2021. From 2017 to 2020, he was a Senior Research Fellow at USI in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2017, he obtained his PhD at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Hong Kong. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from The University of Milano-BICOCCA, Italy. His research has been published in top software engineering venues, such as ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ASE, ISSTA, among others.

Research

Valerio’s research aims to develop new software testing and analysis techniques to reduce development costs and improve software quality. His current research interests include automatic generation of test cases and oracles, genetic programming and search-based software engineering, program synthesis, mobile app testing and analysis, and machine learning testing.


Dr Yu-Cheng Tu

Bio

Yu-Cheng Tu is a Professional Teaching Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland and the Academic Director for the Auckland ICT Graduate School. She graduated from the University of Auckland with a conjoint degree in Japanese and Software Engineering, and later received her Ph.D. in 2014. She has worked in the software industry for a few years before returning to academia.

Research

Yu-Cheng is interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning in software engineering. Her research interests also include cloud computing, software development processes and practices, and industry needs in software development.


Dr Jessica Turner

Bio

Jessica graduated with a Bachelor in Computing and Mathematical Sciences (with Honours) degree and has been working as a Postdoctoral Fellow before being appointed Lecturer at the University of Waikato.

Research

Jessica’s research is in the area of model-based testing and model checking of interactive systems. This interdisciplinary work draws on formal methods, interactive system development, and human computer interaction. She has a particular interest in finding ways to assist in improving the safety and reliability of safety-critical interactive systems. She also has an interest in modelling traffic congestion and ways we can reduce this congestion in order to improve people’s daily commutes.


Dr Elliott Wen

Bio

Dr Elliott Wen is a Lecturer at the School of Computer Science, University of Auckland. He earned his doctoral degree from the same institution in 2020 and his master degree from the Victoria University of Wellington in 2016. Later, he took the role of Research Fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute.

Research

Elliott’s research interests include VR/AR, software engineering, and human-computer interaction. In particular, he dedicates his research efforts to addressing motion sickness and physical safety in VR applications. His approach involves constructing large-scale real-world VR datasets and developing AI-based motion sickness mitigation plugins tailored for 3D engines.