The ReSeSS Research Lab
The Reliable, Secure, and Sustainable Software lab (ReSeSS) focuses on developing automated solutions that support expert decision-making in areas related to quality, security, and reliability of software and AI systems. This includes code management techniques that combine generative AI capabilities with program analysis and formal reasoning; reliable and explainable approaches for malware detection and localization; solutions to improve the robustness, explainability, and fairness of AI systems; as well as approaches for engineering education in the GenAI era.
In all our work, we typically start from exploratory studies, investigating existing practices and core challenges. We then develop solutions for the identified challenges and evaluate them in a practical setup.
I am extremely grateful to have our research supported by NSERC, CFI, Mitacs, SSHRC, IBM, Samsung, Huawei, and Meta.
Our current projects evolve around four (interrelated) areas:
Quality, Security, and Privacy
Security, privacy, malware detection, quality, testability.
Developer Support
Testing and debugging, developer productivity, fact-checking and reasoning in ML/LLM for code.
Software Maintenance and Reuse
Feature-based design and development, reuse, code modernization, services and microservices.
Trustworthy AI
Adversarial robustness, privacy, explainability, law and regulations.Team
Current Students
- Yingying Wang, PhD, 5/2019-present
- Michael Tegegn, PhD, 1/2026-present
- Sarah Bornais, MASc, 9/2023-present (part-time)
- Masih Beigi Rizi, MASc, 9/2024-present
- Jimmy Chen, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2026-present
- Longman Luo, BASc (ECE), research experience, 5/2026-present
- Carl Seela, BSc (Business Informatics and Mathematics), Mitacs intern, Universität Mannheim, Germany, 6/2026-present
- Hanyu (Amelia) Wang, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, The University of Hong Kong, China, 6/2026-present
Former Students
- Robert C. Fuller, PhD, 1/2017-5/2023 (co-supervised with Prof. Philippe Kruchten)
- Asem Ghaleb, PhD, 9/2018-8/2023 (co-supervised with Prof. Pattabiraman since 9/2020)
- Sahar Badihi, PhD, 9/2018-3/2025
- Khaled E. Ahmed, PhD, 9/2017-12/2025 (co-supervised with Prof. Lis, part-time for the last 3 years)
- Yingying Wang, MASc, 5/2017-4/2019
- Duling Lai, MASc, 1/2017-7/2019
- Junbin Zhang, MASc, 9/2017-7/2020
- Harshavardhan Kadiyala, MASc, 9/2017-12/2021
- Michael Cao, MASc, 1/2019-12/2021
- Peiyu (Gabby) Xiong, MASc, 9/2019-12/2022
- Faridah Akinotcho, MASc, 5/2021-3/2024
- Michael Tegegn, MASc, 9/2021-11/2025
- Sugun Machipeddy, MEng project, 9/2018-12/2018
- Armaan Bajwa, MEng project, 1/2019-4/2019
- Yonghan Zhou, MEng project, 5/2019-12/2019
- Rajdeep Kambo, BASc (ECE), USRA, 5/2017-8/2017
- Yanjun Wu (UofT), BSc, summer intern, 5/2017-8/2017
- Bo Hu, BASc (ECE), USRA, 5/2017-8/2017, directed studies, 1/2018-4/2018
- Alexandre Krattinger, BASc, directed studies, 1/2018-4/2018
- Simong Song, BASc (ECE), directed studies, 1/2018-4/2018
- Soumyadeep Thakur, BSc, Mitacs intern, 5/2018-8/2018
- Dhruv Rathi, BSc, Shastri summer intern, 5/2018-8/2018
- Catherine Lee, BASc (ECE), USRA, 5/2018-8/2018, undergraduate thesis 9/2018-12/2018
- Michael Cao, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 5/2018-12/2018 (continued to Master's)
- Alexander Julianto, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 9/2018-12/2018
- Manolis Ioannides, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 1/2019-4/2019
- Linh Tran, BSc (CS), WLIURA, 5/2019-8/2019
- Guanxiong Chen, BASc (ECE), USRA, 5/2019-8/2019
- Shu Xin, BSc, Mitacs intern, 7/2018-9/2019
- Angeli Corpin, BSc (CS), directed studies, 5/2019-12/2019
- Lucy Zhao, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 9/2019-12/2019
- Ao Tang, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 9/2019-12/2019
- Will Zhang, BSc (CS), directed studies, 9/2019-12/2019
- Alberto Misail, BASc (EngPhys), research experience, 9/2019-4/2020 (SANER'22)
- Lisa Kirby, BASc (ECE), USRA, undergraduate thesis, 5/2019-5/2021 (ICPC'21)
- Lirukshman Sundaralingam, BSc (CS), co-op, 5/2020-12/2020
- Shreyans Kulshrestha, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2021-4/2021
- Bowen Luo, BASc (EngPhys), research experience, 9/2020-4/2021
- Jingyang Sun, BASc (ECE), research experience, WLIURA, 1/2021-8/2021
- Marco Ser, BASc (ECE), USRA, 5/2021-8/2021
- Michael Fu, BASc (ECE), research experience, 9/2021-12/2021
- Danica Xiao, BASc (ECE), research experience, 9/2021-4/2022
- John Ahn, BSc (CS), research experience, USRA, directed studies, 1/2021-8/2022 (ICSME'22 Distinguished Paper Award)
- Saurav Banna, BSc (CS), research experience, 5/2022-8/2022
- Yang Hu, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, 6/2022-9/2022
- Ramit Kataria, BSc (CS), research experience, 9/2022-12/2022
- Bowei Ren, BASc (ECE), research experience, 9/2022-12/2022
- Sijan Poudel, BASc (ECE), research experience, 9/2022-12/2022
- Shubhraneel Pal, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, IIT Kharagpur, 5/2022-12/2022 (CSUR'24)
- Evelien Boerstra, BSc (CS), USRA, directed studies, research experience, 5/2020-12/2022 (ICPC'21, ICSME'22 Distinguished Paper Award, IBM Student of the Year Award, Honorable Mention, 2023 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher)
- Zyad Ben-Suleiman, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2023-6/2023
- Sarah Bornais, BASc (ECE), undergraduate thesis, 1/2023-7/2023 (continued to Master's)
- Pranab Pandey, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, IIT Kanpur, 5/2023-7/2023
- Siddharth Gupta, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, IIT Patna, 5/2023-8/2023
- Akira Tong, BSc (CS), USRA, 5/2023-8/2023
- Jaskeerat Sarin, BSc (CS), research experience, WLIURA, 5/2022-8/2023 (CSUR'24)
- Kevin Liu, BSc (CS), research experience, USRA, 1/2023-8/2023
- Aadya Agrawal, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, IIT Delhi, 5/2023-8/2023
- Xiaomeng (Nicole) Nie, BASc (ECE), 9/2023-4/2024
- Louie Tang, BASc (ECE), 1/2024-4/2024
- Sami Nourji, BSc (CS), directed studies, 5/2024-8/2024 (ASE Tool Demos'24)
- Sarthak Harne, BSc (CS), Mitacs intern, IIIT Bangalore, 7/2024-10/2024
- Manan Daga, BSc (CS), WLIURA, research experience, 5/2024-4/2025
- Britton Helfert, BSc (COGS), research experience, 1/2025-4/2025
- Liam Clawson-Honeyman, BASc (ECE), USRA (co-op), 5/2025-8/2025
- Kreetik Thakur, BSc (CS), research experience, 5/2024-12/2024, 9/2025-12/2025
- Boyu Zhu, BSc (SE), Mitacs intern, Fudan University, 5/2025-9/2025
- Qingqing Zheng, BA (Law), Mitacs intern, Shandong University, 6/2025-9/2025
- Lily Lim, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2026-4/2026
- Yahya Almajd, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2026-4/2026
- Jacob Andersen-Lum, BSc (COGS), research experience, 1/2026-5/2026
- Andrew Wang, BASc (ECE), research experience, 1/2026-5/2026
Lab Info
Please read this page if you are interested in joining the ReSeSS research lab.
Internal information for lab members is here.