SIGSOFT Awards 2024
By David Lo (SIGSOFT Awards Chair) and Thomas Zimmermann (SIGSOFT Chair)
SIGSOFT has an award program to recognize the outstanding contributions of the members of the software engineering community. Many of the awards are designated at conferences, for example, the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, as well as several Most Influential Paper and Test of Time Awards. In addition, SIGSOFT has annual awards for contributions that go beyond a single conference, which we want to highlight in this blog post. You can learn more about the program on the SIGSOFT Award web page.
The 2024 Winners!
It is our pleasure to announce the Winners of the SIGSOFT 2024 Awards.
Outstanding Research Award:
The 2024 award goes to Tsong Yueh Chen (Swinburne University of Technology) “for contributions to software testing through the invention and development of metamorphic testing.”
Tsong Yueh Chen is a Professor of Software Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Prior to joining Swinburne, he taught at The University of Hong Kong and The University of Melbourne.
His main research interest is in software testing. In addition to inventing metamorphic testing, he has contributed to the following areas: upper bounds on software-testing effectiveness, proportional sampling strategy for partition testing, failure-based testing, and adaptive random testing. In 2000, in collaboration with Professor T.H. Tse of The University of Hong Kong, he co-founded the Asia-Pacific Conference on Quality Software (APAQS). This was later (in 2002) renamed as the International Conference on Quality Software (QSIC). He was a member of the College of Experts, Australian Research Council (2005–2006). He is a member of the editorial board of Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability (STVR).
Distinguished Service Award:
The 2024 award goes to Massimiliano Di Penta (University of Sannio) “for outstanding service to the software engineering community, including serving as program co-chair for all premier software engineering conferences and several other events.”
Massimiliano Di Penta is a Full Professor at the Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, Italy. His research interests include software analytics, recommender systems for software engineers, software maintenance and evolution, and DevOps. He authored over 320 papers that appeared in international journals, conferences, and workshops.
He has been program co-chair of ICSE 2023, ESEC/FSE 2021, ASE 2017, and several other specialized events such as ICSME, SANER, MSR, ICPC, and SSBSE. He has received awards for research and service, including four ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper awards and several distinguished reviewer awards. He serves/has served in the organizing and program committees of more than 100 conferences. He is associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Software: Evolution and Processes, and editorial board member of Empirical Software Engineering Journal. He has served on the editorial board of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.
Influential Educator Award:
The 2024 award goes to Martin Robillard (McGill University) “for significant contributions to hands-on software design education, including a textbook and a learner-focused software modeling tool.”
Martin Robillard is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia. His research is in the area of software engineering, with an emphasis on the human-centric aspects of software development. His current focus is on documentation generation, test suite quality, and information privacy. He is the author of the book “Introduction to Software Design with Java” and the architect and maintainer of the JetUML software modeling tool. Prof. Robillard is a Distinguished Member of the ACM. He has served as program co-chair for both of the flagship conferences in software engineering (FSE 2012 and ICSE 2017).
Impact Paper Award:
The 2024 award goes to Learning from Examples to Improve Code Completion Systems (published at ESEC/FSE 2009) by Marcel Bruch (JetBrains), Martin Monperrus (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), and Mira Mezini (TU Darmstadt) “for pioneering the use of machine learning to assist developers in generating code snippets, paving the way for today’s intelligent code assistance tools.”
Marcel Bruch is the Head of Customer Success at JetBrains. He is taking responsibility for the technical success of JetBrains products for JetBrains enterprise customers. He is interested in building long-term, technical relationships with JetBrains customers.
Martin Monperrus is a Professor of Software Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. His research lies in the field of software engineering with a current focus on automatic program repair, AI on code, and program hardening. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Rennes, and a Master’s degree from Compiègne University of Technology.
Mira Mezini is a Professor of Software Technology at the Department of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She has also taught and researched as a visiting professor at Northeastern University in Boston in the USA (1997–1999), at Lancaster University in the UK (2013–2016), and at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (2022). She is a member of the board of the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE and co-director of the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence (hessian.AI). The focus of her research is on programming paradigms and tools, in particular for distributed software and methods for automated software analysis, especially for software security. Moreover, she is actively involved in research at the interface between software engineering and AI, with a focus on differential programming and programming languages for neuro-symbolic AI, as well as on the development of qualitative code models for automated software development. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications in renowned journals and conferences in the fields of software engineering and programming languages. She has received various research awards for her research, including the IBM Eclipse Innovation Award twice (2005 and 2006), the Google Research Award (2017), and second place in the 4th German IT Security Award of the Horst Görtz Foundation (2014). In 2012, Mezini received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), the EU’s most highly endowed research funding award.
Early Career Researcher Award:
The 2024 award goes to Kevin Moran (University of Central Florida) “for outstanding contributions to improving the quality of mobile applications, through software testing, deep learning, and user interface development.”
Kevin Moran is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and a member of the Cybersecurity & Privacy (CyberSP) Cluster at the University of Central Florida (UCF). At UCF, he directs the Software Automation, Generation, & Engineering (SAGE) research group. Prior to joining UCF, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University from 2020 to 2023. He graduated with a B.A. in Physics from the College of the Holy Cross in 2013 and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from William & Mary in 2015 and 2018, respectively. His main research interest involves facilitating software engineering, security, and maintenance by building developer tools enhanced by machine learning. He has published over 30 papers at various software engineering and computer security conferences, and his research has been recognized with ACM SIGSOFT distinguished paper awards at ESEC/FSE 2019 and ICSE 2020, and a Best Paper Award at CODASPY 2019.
Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award:
The 2024 award goes to Bianca Trinkenreich (now at Oregon State University) for her Ph.D. thesis “Understanding and Supporting Women’s Participation in Open Source Software” (Northern Arizona University, advised by Igor Steinmacher and Marco Aurelio Gerosa).
Bianca is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Oregon State University. Her main research interest lies in the Human Aspects of Software Engineering. She received an M.S. in Computer Science from the Federal State University of Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a Ph.D. from Northern Arizona University in 2022. Bianca aims to understand sustainability in software engineering teams, leveraging Diversity and Inclusion, Technostress, Developer Productivity, and Developer Experience. Bianca is the first author of papers published in prestigious venues like ICSE, ESEM, CSCW, IST, TSE, and TOSEM. Her contributions have been acknowledged with awards, including the Distinguished Paper Award at ICSE Technical Track 2023, the Best Paper Award at ICSE SEIS 2022, and an Honorable Mention Award at CSCW 2020. With 20 years of experience in the IT industry before her research career, Bianca possesses a unique ability to bridge the gap between academia and industry. Her passion for interdisciplinary research and collaboration with the industry enables her to address practical needs and transform them into valuable research opportunities.
Frank Anger Memorial Award:
The 2024 award goes to Max Camillo Eisele (Saarland University and Bosch). Max Eisele is currently carrying out his PhD in the realm of security testing and fuzzing at Bosch Research, Germany. His research focuses on practical methods for finding vulnerabilities in embedded devices for industrial and consumer applications. He enjoys investigating binary programs on the assembly level for various architectures. His academic supervisor is Professor Andreas Zeller from CISPA Helmholtz Center, Germany.
We will recognize the winners during the ICSE 2024 conference. In addition, Tsong Yueh Chen will give an invited talk at ICSE 2024, and Marcel Bruch, Martin Monperrus, and Mira Mezini are invited to give a talk at FSE 2024.
The Selection Process
In total, the selection committees considered 50 nominations (10 for outstanding research, 5 for distinguished service, 4 for influential educator, 10 for impact paper, 11 for early career, 9 for outstanding dissertation, and 1 for Frank Anger memorial), which is close to 30% more than last year. The decisions were made through a combination of online discussions and virtual meetings. A huge thanks to the SIGSOFT Award Committee Chairs (Walid Maalej, Massimiliano Di Penta, and Myra B. Cohen) and Deputy Chairs (Filippo Lanubile and Gordon Fraser), as well as the members of the respective committees, and all nominators.
Compared to the previous year, we’ve adjusted the submission dates to be earlier than usual, considering that ICSE and FSE conferences have changed their dates. We have also coordinated with IEEE TCSE on the submission dates and award winners.
If you have any suggestions on the award process, please reach out to any of the members of the SIGSOFT executive committee. We are planning to further improve the award selection process and introduce new awards.
Disclaimer: The posts in the SIGSOFT Blog are written by individual contributors and any views or opinions represented in their posts are personal, belong solely to the blog authors, and do not necessarily represent those of ACM SIGSOFT or ACM.
