Supervisors and Areas for Thesis Topics

Lucas Gren

lucas.gren@gu.se

Research interests: Data-driven work, Social Psychology, Agile Development Processes, Statistical Methods
(all in the context of Empirical Software Engineering)

Suggestions for thesis topics 2023:

Leader prototypicality in software engineering: are more typical team members more effective leaders?
The Group Psychology of Safety-Critical Systems Development.
Understanding the Social Dynamics of Mob Programming.
Measurements of Continuous Improvement in the automotive industry.
How to replicate SE experiments with tiny sample sizes: A Bayesian approach.
Sample size recommendations in SE studies.
Interpersonal conflict in software development.
Quality of code reviews and team maturity
The negotiation styles of software developers.

Examples of supervised theses that resulted in a publication:

Nilson M., Antinyan V., and Gren L. "Do internal software quality tools measure validated metrics?" In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Managing Quality in Agile and Rapid Software Development Processes (QuASD 2019), Barcelona, Spain, Nov 27, 2019, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-35333-9_50
Mellblom E., Arason I., Gren L., and Torkar R. “The Connection Between Burnout and Personality Types in Software Developers” IEEE Software 36(5), 2019, DOI: 10.1109/MS.2019.2924769.
Bäckevik A., Tholén E., and Gren L. “Social Identity in Software Development” In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE), Montréal, Canada, May 27, 2019.
Al-Sabbagh K., and Gren L. “The Connections Between Group Maturity, Software Development Velocity and Planning Effectiveness,” Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 30(1), 2018, DOI:10.1002/smr.1896.
Chronis K., and Gren L. “Agility measurements mismatch: A validation study on three agile team assessments in software engineering” In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agile Software Development (XP), Edinburgh, United Kingdom, May 24-27, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-33515-5_2

Daniel Strüber

danstru@chalmers.se

Research interests: Model-Driven Engineering, AI Engineering, Search-Based Software Engineering, Software Product Lines

Open thesis topics for 2022/23:

None anymore.

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Attribute-Based Content Redaction in Large-Scale Data Systems: A Study of Granular Access Control (thesis available)
Development of a Query Language for Improved Versioning Support for Machine- Learning-Based Systems (thesis available)
Generating Mutation Operators for a Search-Based Model-Driven Implementation of the Next Release Problem (thesis available)
A Maturity Assessment Framework for Conversational AI Development Platforms (paper at SAC 2021 available)
Feature-Oriented Defect Prediction (paper at SPLC 2020 available)
Clone Detection for Model Transformation Languages (paper in SoSyM, 2019 available)

Rebekka Wohlrab

wohlrab@chalmers.se

Research interests: Self-adaptive systems, software architecture, automated planning for autonomous systems, automotive software development, cybersecurity, traceability, requirements engineering.

Open thesis topics right now:

None anymore.

Examples of recently supervised theses/projects:

Designing a conceptual model to define contexts for automated planning (BSc, 2022)
Visualizing quality tradeoffs for self-adaptive systems (BSc, 2022)
Using reinforcement learning for policy synthesis for robot mission planning (BSc, 2022)
A constraint adaptation framework for automated planning (BSc, 2022)
Lightweight traceability for agile software development (MSc, 2019, in collaboration with Zenuity)

Ricardo D. Caldas

ricardo.caldas@chalmers.se

Research interests: Robotics, self-adaptive systems, software testing, control theory, formal methods.

Open thesis topics:

Study self-adaptation strategies for robotics systems (ROS-- robot operating system);
Applying combinatorial testing for collecting evidence for self-adaptive systems in the healthcare domain;
Comparing Model Predictive Control (MPC) to traditional PID for software runtime re-configuration;
Open to new proposals within research interests, email me!

Francisco Gomes

francisco.gomes@cse.gu.se

Research interests: automated software testing and analysis, automated test selection and prioritisation, data analytics, test optimisation, software development bots (DevBots).

Open thesis topics for VT2023:

- Software visualisation applied to Test Analytics.
- Developing software development bots to assist regression testing.
- Analysing flipped classroom methods for teaching OOP.

Some detailed ideas for BSc Thesis (co-supervised with Linda Erlenhov):

Thesis A: Usage and adoption of Github actions in open source.
- Question(s): How is the use of GitHub Actions discussed by developers?
- Data collection: Focus on using automated ways for topic analysis of issues and pull requests (using LDA, other language model?)
- Data analysis: Do qualitative analysis of the issues discussion threads.
- Note: Reproduction of Github Actions paper: (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.12224.pdf)
Thesis B: Expectations and discussions on AI assisted development.
- Question(s): What are the main topics of discussion on StackOverflow about ChatGPT and Copilot? What is the general feeling about those tools? Are there specific problems/questions raised by their users in SW development?
- Data collection: Filter and mine stackoverflow discussion posts.
- Data Analysis: Quantitative analysis on related tags, the posts over time, number of answers, etc. Qualitative analysis on the content of discussions (questions and answers), Sentiment analysis on the discussions.
Thesis C: Main problems faced when building github actions
- Question(s): What are the main questions and challenges that people face when developing github actions.
- Data collection: Mine stackoverflow posts, discussion threads, tags, etc.
- Data analysis: Qualitative analysis on the questions, topics, answers, etc.
Paper references:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hx0sfvr8nff9i4v/Nhan_MSR2022.pdf?dl=0
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.12224.pdf
https://peerj.com/articles/cs-866/

Five examples of recently supervised theses:

Evaluating the trade-offs of diversity-based test prioritization: an experiment (2020, Bachelor Thesis)
An experimental study on combining automated and stochastic test data generation (2020, Master's Thesis)
The effect of test case design in software testing bots (2019, Bachelor thesis published at BotSE 2020)
A Case Study on Test Optimisation and Visualisation of Diversity Information (2019, Master's Thesis with Volvo Cars)
Visualisation of Test Failure Data to Support Fault Localisation in Distributed Embedded Systems within the Automotive Industry (2017, BSc Thesis with Volvo Cars- published at ISSRE 2018)

Gregory Gay

ggay@chalmers.se

Research interests: automated software testing and analysis, search-based software engineering, automated test generation, fuzzing, development/testing for environmental sustainability, data analytics, optimization, information retrieval.

Open thesis topics:

No topics/thesis slots available (as of May 15, 2023).

Five examples of recently supervised theses:

Test Maintenance for Machine Learning Systems: A Case Study in the Automotive Industry (2022, Master's Thesis, with Zenseact) (link goes to conference paper based on thesis)
Identifying Redundancies and Gaps Across Testing Levels During Verification of Automotive Software (2022, Master's Thesis, with Scania) (link goes to workshop paper based on thesis)
Mutation Testing in Continuous Integration: An Exploratory Industrial Case Study (2022, Master's Thesis, with Zenseact) (link goes to workshop paper based on thesis)
Search-based Test Generation Framework for Android Apps with Support for Multi-objective Generation: STGFA-SMOG (2021, Master's Thesis) (link goes to conference paper based on thesis)
Bytecode-based Multiple Condition Coverage: An Initial Investigation (2018, Master's Thesis) (link goes to conference paper based on thesis)

Jennifer Horkoff

jenho@chalmers.se

Research interests: requirements engineering, non-functional requirements, machine learning, creativity, agile, business intelligence, modeling, APIs.

Open thesis topics for VT2023:

https://www.cse.chalmers.se/~jenho/Teaching/Theses/ThesisTopics2023.html

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Selecting Business Intelligence Solutions using Requirements Engineering (2019, Master's Thesis)
Evaluating and Developing Methods to Assess Business Process Suitability for Robotic Process Automation: A Design Research Approach (2018, Master's Thesis)
Incremental requirements engineering in a large-scale agile and safety-critical context: a case study (2018, Master's Thesis)
A UML Activity Diagram Extension and Template for Bioinformatics Workflows: A Design Science Study (2019, Bacher's Thesis)
A Framework for Applying an API-layered Architecture to e3 value Models (2018, Bachelor's Thesis)
Find an older list here

Miroslaw Staron

miroslaw.staron@gu.se

Research interests: data analytics; software metrics; software design; mining software repositories; programming languages and techniques; automotive software engineering; telecom software engineering; continuous integration;

Open thesis topics with company collaboration for VT2020:

Volvo Cars: Using Machine Learning for triaging of incident data (software maintenance)
Ericsson: Software measurement optimized data storage
Swedco: Use of Artificial Intelligence to improve the digitization process in urban development
Other thesis topics also available with Software center companies - www.software-center.se

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Applying Machine Learning to Identify Maintenance Level for Software Releases (2019, Master's Thesis)
Improving the Continuous Integration Process for the Vehicle Dynamics Software at VCC using Docker (2019, Master's Thesis)

Philipp Leitner

philipp.leitner@chalmers.se

Research interests: Cloud computing; software performance (especially for Web- and cloud-based systems); modern release engineering (canary releases, A/B testing, chaos engineering, etc.); DevOps; mining software repositories

See "Joel Scheuner" and "Linda Erlenhov" for more thesis topics from my group.

Open directions for master's theses:

Development of an automated tool (bot) for performance measurement
A study of JMH benchmark usage in open source systems
Studying the impact of dependency management bots on software security
Docker adoption and usage across open source projects

Open bachelor thesis topics:

TBA

Some examples of recently supervised theses:

Optimizing the generation of Java JMH Benchmarks (2022, Master's Thesis)
- Thesis
Using Edge technologies to improve performance of cloud computing in the automotive industry (2022, Master's Thesis)
JUnit-to-JMH: Automatic Generation of Performance Benchmarks from Existing Unit Tests in Java (2021, Master's Thesis)
The Impact of Adopting Continuous Integration on the Delivery Time of Pull Requests - A Partial Replication and Extension (2019, Master's Thesis)
- Thesis
- Resulting scientific paper

Hamdy Michael Ayas

ayas@chalmers.se

Research interests: Cloud computing; software architecture migrations/transitions (especially to cloud-based architectures such as microservices and FaaS); empirical research on DevOps (methodologies, release engineering); scaling and integrating ML; mining software repositories

Open MSc theses topics:

(co-supervised with AstraZeneca AB) Monitoring, tracking and visualization of microservices for deciding on service granularity (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3322050462/)

Richard Berntsson Svensson

richard@cse.gu.se

Research interests: Data Driven Decision Making; Decision Making; Creativity and Innovation; Requirements Engineering; Agile and Lean Software Development.

Open thesis topics with company collaboration for VT2023:

Not for VT23

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Systematic Data-Driven Decision Making in Requirements Engineering (2020, Master's Thesis)
LeAgile Measurement and Metrics: A Systematic Literature Review and Case Study (2017, Master's Thesis)
Gamification as a Tool to Encourage Eco-Driving (2017, Master's Thesis)
Aligning Legacy Requirement Specifications and Semi-Automated Testing (2015, Master's Thesis)
Impact of Usability on Process Lead-Time in Information Systems (2015, Master's Thesis)
More examples can be found on my page

Picture of Richard

Richard Torkar

richard.torkar@gu.se

Research interests: applications of analysis methods in software engineering activities; software testing; soft issues in software engineering; fault prediction; quality prediction; machine learning applications in software engineering; causal analysis; experimental designs

Open thesis topics:

Generative models from directed acyclic graphs. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) have become common for reasoning about causality in a system. One way to use DAGs is to do sanity checks of statistical models. The idea here is to first start by designing a DAG and then make it generative, i.e., annotate DAGs to then generate data from them. The next step is to use the generated data to see how well a model design can recover the parameters of interest (if it can't then you have a misspecified model). One could then also use information theoretical approaches to judge how similar the empirical data is to the generative data, and much more...
Model comparisons in Bayesian data analysis relies heavily on information theoretical measures to judge out of sample prediction capabilities (e.g., AIC, BIC, WAIC, LOO, KL divergence etc.) A "significantly" difference model is often pointed out in literature a bit arbitrary to be between 4 $LaTeX: \sigma$ and 6 $LaTeX: \sigma$ "better" than other models concerning expected log pointwise predictive density (elpd/elppd).
I would like us to do a simulation study where we investigate disparate thresholds; there are tensions here to investigate! There is an implicit cost for larger models (e.g. larger model is more difficult to understand or the costs of feature measurements might be unknown), and then we might want to choose a smaller model with a close to similar predictive performance as a bigger model. This is a bit tricky since we need to quantify the complexity of a model's design (implicitly its output), but we probably also want to have qualitative measurements from experts (i.e., what do they judge to be hard to understand; and this is dependent on many things...) In summary, we want to find a utility theory for model selection; a theory that preferably is general. If we can't find such a theory, we should at least be able to provide the main components for deriving a utility for a specific context.

Examples of recently supervised theses:

The broken windows theory in software engineering: An experiment on technical debt propagation (2021, Master's thesis) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.01549.pdf
Non-functional requirements testing in the Medtech industry: An automated test framework for vascular surgery simulations (2021, Master's thesis)
Increasing End-Users' Awareness of Software's Environmental Impact: An Exploratory Case Study (2021, Master's thesis)
Measuring affective states from technical debt: A psychoempirical software engineering experiment (2019, Master's thesis) https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.10660
An empirical study of Linespots: A novel past-fault algorithm (2019, Master's thesis) https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09394

Picture of Prof. R. Feldt

Robert Feldt

robert.feldt@chalmers.se

Research interests: software testing and quality, automated software engineering, human factors & psychology, software teams, machine learning & artificial intelligence, optimisation & search, information theory & statistics & visualisation

Open thesis topics with company collaboration for VT2020:

Optimizing the Diversity and Diameter of Test Sets (with ReTest)
Automated Boundary Testing (with ReTest)
Selecting Typical Test Cases from a Large and Generated Set (with ReTest)
Collective Intelligence of Software Teams (with SAAB and Volvo/VCC)

Examples of recently supervised theses:

David Gustafsson and Erik Pihl, "Strategy for Cross-Project Defect Prediction Models in Industry", in collaboration with CPAC Systens AB. (2018, Master's thesis)
Patrik Haar and David Michaelsson, "Automated GUI Testing: A Comparison Study With A Maintenance Focus", in collaboration with Canea AB. (2018, Master's thesis)
Kevin Hedberg Griggith and Erik Nguyen, "Understanding the Impacts of Affects on Individual and Team Performance with the Experience Sampling Method", in collaboration with Volvo AB. (2018, Master's thesis)
More examples can be found on my MT page

Eric Knauss

eric.knauss@cse.gu.se

oerich.wordpress.com

Research interests: Requirements engineering, architecture, knowledge management, strategic decision making in scaled-agile system development and ai-based system development

Open thesis topics with company collaboration for VT2021:

Prototype and Requirements Engineering of an AI-based Augmented Reality information system for Smart-Build Environments. The prototype should use mobile and augmented reality technology to make AI-based decision support available to key stakeholders on-site. Various partners in the building sector.
Method and approach to describe use cases for autonomous drive and active safety technology in relation to contextual information. In collaboration with a large local supplier of autonomous drive and active safety technology.
Method and approach to describe quality attributes of data in distributed deep learning architectures. In collaboration with a large local supplier of autonomous drive and active safety technology.

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Mebrahtom Guesh Gebremichael (2019): Requirements Engineering for Large-Scale Agile System Development: A Tooling Perspective. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Felix Lissåker, Johan Sjöberg (2019): Architecture Framework for Blockchain Implementation: A Design Science Study. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Odzaya Batsaikhan, Yi-Chun Lin (2018): Building a Shared Understanding of Customer Value in a Large- Scale Agile Organization. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Elsa Mjöl Bergsteinsdóttir, Henrik Helén Edholm (2018): Designing Continuous Toolchains: Using Propo- sed Guidelines and Tool Capabilities. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Rim Shahin, Catarina Curta (2018): Designing a Requirements Elicitation Approach for Intelligent and Interactive Systems in Autonomous Vehicles. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Alexander Stotsky

alexander.stotsky@chalmers.se

Research interests: Statistical methods, 6-sigma, Data analysis, Numerical methods, Data driven modeling, System identification, Adaptive control, Frequency estimation, Fault detection, Wind energy, Power systems

Open thesis topics for VT2021:

Application of the Statistical Methods in Software Engineering: Systematic Literature Review, Challenges and Future Directions. The topic of the thesis is associated with the literature review, collection of statistical case studies (real-world examples) and determination of new trends in application of the statistical methods in software engineering.

Khaled
Al-Sabbagh

Khaled.al-sabbagh@gu.se

Research interests: Software Testing, Continuous Integration, Machine learning for Software Engineering, Software teams and group maturity.

Open thesis topics with company collaboration for VT2021:

None

Ideas of thesis topics for VT2021:

Reducing The Cost Of Continuous Integration Using a Build Selection Approach.
Improving Code Violation Detection Using Machine Learning and Noise Handling Techniques.
Identifying Dependency Patterns Between Test Case Outcomes and Code Change Categories.

Christian Berger

christian.berger@gu.se

Research interests: Architecting complex and distributed realtime software systems, micro-services for embedded systems and cyber-physical systems, continuous integration/deployment/experimentation, autonomous driving, simulations, scalability for real-time data streams.

Open thesis topics:

Designing, training, and applying ML-models to spot interesting traffic situations on a dataset covering more than 1 year of highway driving data covering video streams, vehicle onboard data, and object providing sensors.

Beatriz Cabrero-Daniel

beatriz.cabrero-daniel@gu.se

Open thesis topics:

Data ownership and cyber-security in the scope of a 5G enabled fleet of autonomous vehicles (e.g., public transport)
Distributed vs centralized decision making for autonomous vehicle fleets (related to security and network congestion, I’m very interested in how to “distribute intelligence” in multi-agent systems)
Explainability and trust for complex ML-based decisions for vehicle fleets
Optimisation of a multiagent system (fleet of autonomous electric vehicles) based on partial data
Public transport in sustainable smart cities: autonomous and electrical vehicle fleet management
Quality requirements for fleets of electric AVs (performance productivity, resource usage, waste reduction, description, metrics, measurements, etc.)
Requirements for human-readable (self-explanatory) auto generated status reports for a fleet of vehicles
Safety and security requirements for electric autonomous vehicles (minimal risk manoeuvres, estop, etc.)

Birgit Penzenstadler

birgitp@chalmers.se

Research interests: sustainability; neuroplasticity practices for resilience; software systems for intentional communities; mindfulness and sustainability practices; wellbeing; mental health; permaculture;
For the following topic proposals I will request you to find an adequate company (or several) to work with.

Gender equality in IT and how that influences the development and the impacts of IT (Citybeats Sustainability Dashboard)
Analysis of Intervention opportunities to increase wellbeing in software engineers' days
(An in-depth analysis with companies or one more dedicated company, by a survey followed by interviews that go deeper into the survey questions to elicit the needs and wishes and opportunities for where & how we can increase wellbeing. Then we propose options for tailored interventions that fit the needs that have come up.
Action Research on Intervention opportunities to increase wellbeing in software engineers' days
(A survey on wellbeing and resilience and then evaluate a proposed intervention developed based on the actual needs, and then evaluate the tailored solution. This requires company employees to be willing to participate.)
Biohacking amongst software engineers - how to be and perform well
(Evaluation of an intervention, to see which routines make a difference - we would need a set of a dozen people that do the intervention and a set of a dozen who don’t (but still fill out a couple of surveys for us) such that we can compare the data)
Use of recreational activities and substances in software engineering
(Survey research across several companies and a wider network of practitioners - you may need a good network for this one to have people respond.)
Mental wellbeing in software engineering companies - intention and reality
(Getting an overview of what is there, this calls for a wider survey, to check what companies are putting out there versus what the employees get.)

Examples of recently supervised theses:

Does Gender Matter? An Interview Study on Representation of Gender in Software Systems (2022, BSc)
Mental wellbeing and anxiety amongst students (2022, BSc)
Benefits of breathing practices for computer workers (2021, MSc thesis and BSc thesis)
The impact of software systems on sustainability (2021, BSc theses)
Designing a customer CRM system for the home automation industry (2016, Master's Thesis)
SE4S Project Vision Diagramming Toolkit: Build your vision (2016, Master's Thesis)
User Interface Design, Database Connectivity and Security in Fortified Cards (2016, Master's Thesis)
QR codes and communication between Android and unit testing in Fortified Cards (2016, Master's Thesis)
Protomaker - three dimensional CNC Platform (2016, Master's Thesis)
Laser Printhead Platform for Protomaker (2016, Master's Thesis)
Weighing environmental impacts in software distribution systems (2015, Master's Thesis)