Archived News Stories

Older announcements from 2014–2025. For recent news, see the home page.

2025

December 2025: The first SAGE Lab Ph.D. student has graduated! Congrats to Arun Krishna Vajjala for defending his dissertation “Beyond the Pixel: AI-Augmented Programming Tools for the Design, Testing, and Generation of User Interfaces” and joining Apple as a Machine Learning Research Engineer.
December 2025: One technical paper on Mechanistic Interpretability of LLMs for Code published at NeurIPS'25! Congrats to our collaborators at GMU.
December 2025: I have been recognized as a Rising Star by the Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine of Florida (ASEMFL).
August 2025: One technical paper on Automated Test Oracle Generation accepted to ASE'25! Congrats to SAGE Lab member Junayed Mahmud.
July 2025: One tool-demo paper on UI-Enhanced Bug Localization published at ICSME'25! Congrats to the UCF Senior Design Team and SAGE Lab member Junayed Mahmud.
January 2025: I have received the NSF CAREER Award for advancing the future of UI Engineering! Thank you to all my students and collaborators.
January 2025: One technical paper on Automatically Assessing Bug Report Quality accepted to ICPC'25! Congrats to SAGE Lab member Junayed.

2024

December 2024: The SAGE Lab has received a research award from Apple's Human-Centered Machine Learning group for our work on UI Engineering!
December 2024: One technical paper on IoT Testing Practices accepted to ICST’25!! Congrats to Sage Lab member Safwat!!
November 2024: SAGE Lab PhD student Atish won 1st place in the ACM Student Research Competition at ASE’24 🏆 for his work on LLM Understanding of Code Stylometry!! Congrats Atish!!
July 2024: One technical paper on Mapping Bug Reports to UI Screens accepted to ISSTA’24!! Congrats to Sage Lab Member Junayed, and collaborators Antu, Yang, Ying, and Oscar!!
May 2024: Our IEEE S&P’24 paper on Industry Perspectives of Static Analysis Tools for Security has received a distinguished paper award (awarded to 9 out of 1,463 submissions)!!! 🏆 Congrats to SAGE Lab collaborator Amit!! Award Photo!
March 2024: One journal paper accepted to IEEE TSE on building a Theory of Causation for Interpreting Neural Models of Source Code!! Congrats to SAGE Lab Collaborators David, Alejandro, and Nathan!! If you are interested in Interpretability for LLMs of code, check out this paper!
January 2024: Two technical papers on Automated GUI Evolution and Automated GUI Oracles accepted to MSR’24!!! Congrats to SAGE Lab members Sabiha and Junayed!!
January 2024: Dr. Moran was selected to receive the 2024 ACM SigSoft Early Career Researcher Award!! Thank you to all students and collaborators for making this award possible!!
January 2024: Junayed Mahmud has received the Outstanding Graduate Creative Work Award from UCF CECS for his paper, “On Using GUI Interaction Data to Improve Text Retrieval-based Bug Localization”!! Congrats Junayed!!
January 2024: One technical paper on Neural Code Understanding for Impact Analysis accepted to FSE’24!! Congrats to SAGE Lab collaborators Yanfu Yan and Nathan Cooper!! This paper is also a collaboration with Cisco Systems!!

2023

December 2023: One technical paper on using Neural Screen Understanding for UI Testing accepted to ICST’24!!! Congrats to SAGE Lab member Safwat!
December 2023: One technical paper on using Neural Screen Understanding for Detecting Accessibility Issues accepted to ICSE’24!!! Congrats to SAGE Lab members Arun and Hasan!
October 2023: One technical paper on using Semantic GUI Scene Learning to Detect Duplicate UI Bugs accepted to ICSE’24!!!
July 2023: One technical paper on Industry Perspectives of Security-focused Static Analysis Tools accepted to Oakland’24!!
July 2023: Two Tool Demonstration papers on Smart Home Security and Analysis of Crypto Detectors accepted at ESEC/FSE 2023!!
July 2023: One technical paper on Neural Bug Triaging accepted to ASE’23!! Congrats to Sage Lab Member Atish!!
June 2023: One technical paper entitled On Using GUI Interaction Data to Improve Text Retrieval-based Bug Localization unconditionally accepted to the Technical Track at ICSE’24!! Congrats to SAGE Lab members Junayed, Hasan, Safwat, and Hooman!!
April 2023: Dr. Moran was selected to receive a distinguished reviewer award for ICSE’23!! 🏆
March 2023: Dr. Moran was selected to receive the MobileSoft Rising Star Award for 2023!!! Thank you to the MobileSoft community for the recognition and to my collaborators and students without whom, my research wouldn't be possible!! 🏆
February 2023: Workshop Paper examining the use of ChatGPT in CS Education accepted to TestEd’23!! Congrats to GMU students Sajed and Suzzana!!
January 2023: Two Tool Demonstration Papers accepted to ICSE’23 on our AVGUST and BURT tools. Congrats to SAGE Lab members Junayed, Safwat, and Kesina!!

2022

December 2022: Technical paper on Automated UI Analysis for Detecting Deceptive UI Designs accepted to ICSE’23!!! Congrats to Sage Lab Members Hasan, Sabiha, and Damilola!!
October 2022: Dr. Moran gave a keynote address at the A-Mobile workshop, and participated in a panel on AI and program comprehension at the AeSIR Workshop!!
August 2022: Grant awarded from Cisco Systems on Neural Code Search and Refactoring!! Thank you to the research team at Cisco!!
June 2022: Two Technical papers on UI Testing and Bug Reporting have been accepted to ESEC/FSE’22!! Congrats to Sage Lab Members Junayed, Safwat, and Kesina!!
May 2022: Dr. Moran was selected to receive a distinguished reviewer award for MSR’22 and ICPC’22!! 🏆
February 2022: I gave an invited research talk titled “Learning Patterns from User Interfaces to Automate Software Engineering Tasks” at Montreal’s ML4Code group.
January 2022: Two Research Papers accepted as Oral Presentations to SANER’22!! Congrats to SAGE Lab Member Junayed!!

2021

September 2021: Journal Paper entitled “A Systematic Literature Review of Deep Learning in Software Engineering Research” accepted to TOSEM!!
August 2021: Paper entitled “Why Crypto-detectors Fail: A Systematic Evaluation of Cryptographic Misuse Detection Techniques” was accepted to IEEE S&P 2022!!!
August 2021: Grant awarded from the NSF CPS program on Understanding and Testing Smart Homes!! Thank you to the NSF!!
July 2021: Grant awarded from Cisco Systems on Automated Code Review!! Thank you Cisco!!
June 2021: Paper entitled “Code to Comment Translation: A Comparative Study on Model Effectiveness and Errors” was accepted to NLP4Prog’21!!
May 2021: Dr. Moran was selected to receive a Distinguished Reviewer Award for both MSR’21 and ICPC’21!! 🏆
February 2021: MSR’21 Data Showcase paper accepted: “AndroR2: A Dataset of Manually-Reproduced Bug Reports for Mobile Apps”!! Congrats to GMU Ph.D. students Junayed and Hasan!!

2020

December 2020: Technical Paper entitled “It Takes Two to Tango: Combining Visual and Textual Information for Detecting Duplicate Video-Based Bug Reports” accepted to ICSE’21!!
November 2020: Journal Paper entitled “Systematic Mutation-based Evaluation of the Soundness of Security-focused Android Static Analysis Techniques” accepted to ACM TOPS!!
July 2020: Journal Paper entitled “Security in Centralized Data Store-based Home Automation Platforms: A Systematic Analysis of Nest and Hue” accepted to ACM TCPS!!
July 2020: Our ICSE’20 Paper entitled “Translating Video Recordings of Mobile App Usages into Replayable Scenarios” has been awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award!! 🏆
July 2020: Two grants from the NSF have been awarded to support our research on Bug Reporting and Automated Software Traceability!! Thank you to the NSF!!
May 2020: I am part of the steering committee that recently published a community report from the 2019 NSF Workshop on Deep Learning and Software Engineering. Take a look at the report and contribute!
April 2020: I will be joining George Mason University in Fall 2020 as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department!
March 2020: Journal paper entitled “Enabling Mutant Generation for Open- and Closed-Source Android Apps” accepted to IEEE TSE!!
January 2020: Technical paper entitled “Towards a Natural Perspective of Smart Homes for Practical Security and Safety Analyses” accepted to S&P’20!!

2019

December 2019: Three Technical Papers on Automated Traceability, Android Testing, and Predicting Test Asserts accepted to ICSE’20!!
June 2019: Our paper “Assessing the Quality of the Steps to Reproduce in Bug Reports” accepted to ESEC/FSE’19 has won the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award!! 🏆
May 2019: Technical Paper entitled “Assessing the Quality of the Steps to Reproduce in Bug Reports” accepted to ESEC/FSE’19!!
March 2019: Our CODASPY’19 paper “A Study of Data Store-Based Home Automation” has won the best paper award!! 🏆

2018

December 2018: Technical Paper entitled “A Study of Data Store-Based Home Automation” accepted to CODASPY’19!
December 2018: Tool Demo Paper entitled “Guigle: a GUI Search Engine for Android Apps” accepted to ICSE’19!
July 2018: Technical Paper entitled "Detecting and Summarizing GUI Changes in Evolving Mobile Apps" accepted to ASE'18!
June 2018: Technical Paper entitled "Assessing Test Case Prioritization on Real Faults & Mutants" accepted to ICSME'18!
May 2018: Technical Paper entitled “Discovering Flaws in Security-Focused Static Analysis Tools for Android using Systematic Mutation" accepted to USENIX'18!
May 2018: I have successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation and will be joining William & Mary as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in August 2018!
May 2018: Journal First paper entitled "Machine Learning-Based Prototyping of Graphical User Interfaces for Mobile Apps" has been accepted to TSE'18!
January 2018: Tool Demo Paper entitled "MDroid+: A Mutation Testing Framework for Android" accepted to ICSE'18!

2017

December 2017: Technical Paper entitled "Automated Reporting of GUI Design Violations for Mobile Apps" accepted to ICSE'18!
July 2017: Paper entitled "How do Developers Test Android Apps" accepted to ICSME'17Industry Track!
June 2017: Technical Paper entitled "Enabling Mutation Testing for Android Apps" accepted to ESEC/FSE'17!
June 2017: Paper entitled “Continuous, Evolutionary and Large-Scale: A New Perspective for Automated Mobile App Testing” accepted to ICSME'17!
February 2017: Short Paper accepted to MobileSoft'17! Congrats to W&M undergraduate Richard Bonett on his first publication!
January 2017: Paper accepted to the Formal Research Tool Demonstration Trackat ICSE'17!

2016

July 2016: Paper entitled "A Large-scale Empirical Comparison of Static and Dynamic Test Case Prioritization Techniques" accepted to FSE'16!
May 2016: I'm presenting at the ICSE16 DSand Tool Demo Track! Stop by if you are interested in tools for Android Debugging!
March 2016: Check out my article in the IEEE Software Blog about improving bug reporting for mobile applications.
January 2016: Papers accepted to the Formal Research Tool Demonstration, and Doctoral Symposium Tracks at ICSE'16!

2015

December 2015: Paper entitled "Automatically Discovering, Reporting and Reproducing Android Application Crashes" accepted to ICST'16!
September 2015: Second Place among Graduate students at the ACM Student Research Competition held at ESEC/FSE'15 and sponsored by Microsoft Research! 🏆
July 2015: Paper Accepted to Student Research Competition (SRC) Sponsored by Microsoft at FSE/ESEC'15! For more info click here.
July 2015: Replication Package (which includes the FUSION tool) for FSE'15 paper accepted! Visit the webpage here!
June 2015: My Paper "Auto-Completing Bug Reports for Android Applications" has been accepted to ESEC/FSE’15! For more info click here.
March 2015: First co-authored paper accepted to MSR'15! For more info click here.
March 2015: Recipient of a 2015-2016 Virginia Space Grant Consortium Graduate Research Fellowship! Read more about the award and program here.

2014

September 2014: I just launched a new app on the Google Play Store called SensorPass! This app will help me and my research partners collect data for an Android Security Project. Check it out and Install it from here!