AI x Software Engineering & Testing (ASET)

We develop and evaluate practical software engineering techniques to support the efficient development of robust, maintainable software and cyber-physical systems. Much of our research is geared towards the growing role of AI in the software-development lifecycle, from agentic software development through to systems such as autonomous vehicles that themselves incorporate AI into their core functionality.

Research themes

AI

AI is a theme that cuts across all of our research themes. We are interested in the development of new AI-enabled technologies to support and enhance traditional software engineering tasks (with a particular expertise in testing) – as elaborated in our Test Generation and Test Analytics and Test Validation themes. We also have an established track-record of developing novel techniques to test newer classes of AI-enabled systems, from self-driving cars to smart manufacturing systems, as elaborated in our “Hard-to-test” systems theme.

Test Generation

Test Generation is concerned with the efficient identification of inputs that will expose a bug. Our group has developed approaches to cater for a wide range of testing scenarios - from white-box systems where code and runtime-state can be monitored through to black-box systems where we can only control inputs and observe outputs. We have developed techniques that incorporate search-based algorithms (McMinn, Rojas, Shin), Model-Based Testing (Bogdanov, Derrick, Hierons, Walkinshaw), Fuzzing (Walkinshaw), Exploratory Testing techniques (McMinn, Walkinshaw), and LLM-based approaches (McMinn, Shin, Walkinshaw).

Test Analytics and Test Validation 

Test Analytics and Test Validation are concerned with the assessment of existing test-sets to establish their capacity to reliably expose any bugs that might exist in the system. From a test-analytics standpoint we have developed approaches to detect test-flakiness, where tests inconsistently pass or fail from one run to another (McMinn). We have a longstanding interest in the assessment of test sets in terms of their adequacy. Much of our work has focussed on Mutation Testing (Hierons, McMinn, Shin), with a recent focus on testing Rust programs. We also have a longstanding interest in the use of Machine Learning and, more recently, Causal Inference techniques to reason about the behaviour of systems under test when there are limited specifications to draw upon (Bogdanov, Derrick, Hierons, Shin, Walkinshaw).

"Hard-to-test" Systems

“Hard-to-test” systems refers to a variety of classes of system that do not fit into the traditional mould of a software system, and therefore present their own additional testing challenges, which may include long run-times, non-determinism, and environmental dependencies that are hard to control. We have recently focussed on Augmented / Extended Reality systems (Rojas), Autonomous Driving Systems (Shin, Walkinshaw), Robotic systems and other cyber-physical systems (Bogdanov, Hierons, Rojas, Walkinshaw) - much of this work has been in collaboration with colleagues at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). 

Affiliated academics

• Prof Graham Birtwistle (University of Calgary)
• Eur Ing Dr Anthony J Cowling (Honorary)
• Dr Dimitris Dranidis (International Faculty)
• Dr George Eleftherakis (International Faculty)
• Prof Gordon Fraser ( University of Passau)
• Prof W Michael L Holcombe (Honorary)
• Prof Petros Kefalas (International Faculty)
• Dr Mariam Kiran
• Dr Raluca Lefticaru
• Dr Ioanna Stamatopoulou (International Faculty)
• Dr Ramsay Taylor

Publications

Academic articles

Here you can find research publications for the AI x Software Engineering & Testing Research Group, listed by academic.  The head link navigates to the official web page for the relevant academic (with highlighted favourite publications).  The remaining links navigate to their DBLP author page, their Google Scholar citations page and optionally a self-maintained publications page.

Academic staff

Prof Phil McMinn	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Kirill E Bogdanov	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Prof John Derrick	DBLP	Google Scholar
Prof Rob Hierons	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Siobhán D North	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Jose Miguel Rojas Siles	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Donghwan Shin	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Anthony JH Simons	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Dr Neil Walkinshaw	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web

Affiliated academics

Prof Graham Birtwistle	DBLP	Google Scholar
Eur Ing Dr Anthony J Cowling	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr Dimitris Dranidis	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr George Eleftherakis	DBLP	Google Scholar
Prof Gordon Fraser	DBLP	Google Scholar	Web
Prof W Michael L Holcombe	DBLP	Google Scholar
Prof Petros Kefalas	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr Mariam Kiran	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr Raluca-Elena Lefticaru	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr Ioanna Stamatopoulou	DBLP	Google Scholar
Dr Ramsay Taylor	DBLP	Google Scholar

Affiliated researchers 

Dr Mike Croucher	GoogleScholar
Prof Paul Richmond	DBLP	GoogleScholar	Web

Research theses

Here you can find recently-published PhD (and MPhil) theses, which have been deposited in the White Rose eTheses Online repository.  Follow links to the abstract, and then to the full thesis (if public) or to a request form (if a time-embargo restriction has been placed on public release).

Recently published theses

Dr Islam Elgendy	2025	Enhancing and Evaluating Software Test Case Diversity
Dr Richard Somers	2025	Causal Surrogate Models: Adding "What If" to Cyber-Physical System Testing
Dr Muhammad Firhard Roslan	2025	Test Suite Health: Automatically Improving the Reliability and Effectiveness of Test Suites
Dr Owain Parry	2023	Understanding and Mitigating Flaky Software Test Cases
Dr Andrew Graham Clark	2023	Establishing the Causal Foundations of Metamorphic Testing: A Novel Application of Causal Inference for Testing Computational Modelling Software
Dr Ibrahim Althomali	2022	Automated Classification and Repair of Presentation Failures in Responsive Web Pages
Dr Benjamin Simon Clegg	2021	The application of mutation testing to enhance the automated assessment of introductory programming assignments
Dr Qamar Naith	2021	Crowdsourced Testing Approach For Mobile Compatibility Testing
Dr Eidah Alzahrani	2021	The impact of minimising data movement on the overall performance of the simulation of complex systems applied to FLAME GPU
Dr Nasser Albunian	2020	An Investigation of Search Behaviour in Search-Based Unit Test Generation
Dr Abdullah Alsharif	2020	Automated Software Testing of Relational Database Schemas
Dr Michael Foster	2020	Reverse Engineering Systems to Identify Flaws and Understand Behaviour
Dr Thomas Weripuo Gyeera	2019	Monitoring and Adaptation of Pooled Cloud Computing Resources
Dr Michael Herzberg	2019	Formal Foundations for Provably Safe Web Components
Dr David Paterson	2019	Improvements to Test Case Prioritisation considering Efficiency and Effectiveness on Real Faults
Dr Thomas White	2019	Guiding Random Graphical and Natural User Interface Testing Through Domain Knowledge
Dr Michal Soucha	2019	Testing and Active Learning of Resettable Finite-State Machines
Dr Sadeen Alharbi	2018	Automatic Framework to Aid Therapists to Diagnose Children who Stutter
Dr Krenare Pireva	2018	Cloud eLearning - Personalisation of Learning using Resources from the Cloud
Dr Thomas Walsh	2018	Automatic Identification of Presentation Failures in Responsive Web Pages
Dr Ermira Daka	2018	Improving Readability in Automatic Unit Test Generation
Dr Shtwai Alsubai	2018	Child Prime Label Approaches to Evaluate XML Structured Queries
Dr José Carlos Medeiros de Campos	2017	Search-based Unit Test Generation for Evolving Software
Dr Hanaa Al Zadjali	2017	Compressing Labels of Dynamic XML Data using Base-9 Scheme and Fibonacci Encoding
Dr Dimitrios Kourtesis	2017	Policy-Driven Governance in Cloud Service Ecosystems
Dr Maria Ulfah Siregar	2016	Support for Model Checking Z Specifications
Mr Samer Al Khazraji	2016	A Labelling Technique Comparison for Indexing Large XML Database
Dr Sina Shamshiri	2016	Automated Unit Testing of Evolving Software
Mr Konstantinos Rousis	2016	Disciplined Exploitation of Emergent Properties
Dr Abdullah Alsaeedi	2016	Improving Software Model Inference by Combining State Merging and Markov Models
Dr Rustem Dautov	2016	EXCLAIM Framework: a Monitoring and Analysis Framework to Support Self-Governance in Cloud Application Platforms
Dr Fotios Gonidis	2016	A Framework Enabling the Cross-Platform Development of Service-based Cloud Applications
Dr Christopher Wright	2016	Mutation Analysis of Relational Database Schemas
Dr Alaa Almelibari	2015	Labelling Dynamic XML Documents: a Group Based Approach
Dr Ahmad Subahi	2015	A Business User Model-Driven Engineering Method for Developing Information Systems
Dr Othlapile Dinakenyane	2014	SIQXC: Schema Independent Queryable XML Compression for Smartphones
Ms Isidora Petreska	2014	Biologically Inspired Agents: A Framework for Formal Modelling and Simulation of Agents with Elementary Spatial Attributes
Dr Joseph Vella	2014	An Object-Oriented Data and Query Model
Dr Andrea Corbett	2013	Agent-Based Modelling of Transactive Memory Systems and Knowledge Processes in Agile versus Traditional Software Development Teams
Dr Sheeva Afshan	2013	Search-Based Generation of Human Readable Test Data and Its Impact on Human Oracle Costs
Dr Norah Farooqi	2013	Applying Dynamic Trust Based Access Control to Improve XML Databases Security
Dr Mathew Hall	2013	Improving Software Remodularisation
Dr Ognen Paunovski	2013	Exploring Emergent Phenomena: Towards Analysis and Synthesis of Emergent Formations in Complex Systems
Dr Ervin Ramollari	2013	Automated Verification and Testing of Third-Party Web Services