- SEG-staff - INF Mailman

Fw: Spreading the word: Study on AI-generated academic websites
by Panichella, Sebastiano (INF) 09 Dec '25

09 Dec '25

Dear SEG colleagues, Oriane Pierrès from UZH is looking for participants in one of her studies on "Study on AI-generated academic websites." If you're interested, I've forwarded her email. Cheers, Sebastiano ________________________________ From: Oriane Pierrès <oriane.pierres(a)dsi.uzh.ch> Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 9:24 AM To: Panichella, Sebastiano (INF) <sebastiano.panichella(a)unibe.ch> Subject: Spreading the word: Study on AI-generated academic websites You don't often get email from oriane.pierres(a)dsi.uzh.ch. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> Dear Sebastiano, Thank you for accepting to spread the word at the university of Bern. You can find the email invitation below and in the attachments, I put the flyer I prepared for the study. I wish you a nice day! Warm regards, Oriane Email invitation: Subject: Invitation to Participate in a Study on AI-Generated Academic Websites Dear fellow researchers, Do you have a personal academic website? Would you like to contribute to research on the potential of AI platforms to generate academic websites? If so, I would be delighted to have you join my study! Who can participate? * Researchers (from PhD candidate to professors)... * ... and who own a personal academic website. * No coding experience is required. You will use an AI platform called Lovable, which allows you to describe your desired website in natural language. What will you be asked to do? * Complete a short pre-study survey (approx. 5 minutes) * Generate a website using Lovable by following a few simple instructions (approx. 30 minutes) * Complete a final survey (approx. 10 minutes) When can you participate? * Participation is open from December 8, 2025 to January 5, 2026 * Earlier participation is very much appreciated. It helps a fellow colleague stay on schedule 😉 As a thank you for your participation: * You will receive a 10 CHF voucher * You may keep the generated website code for your own use Questions? Feel free to contact Dr. Oriane Pierrès at Oriane.pierres(a)dsi.uzh.ch<mailto:Oriane.pierres@dsi.uzh.ch> Ready to participate? Please fill out the pre-study survey<https://www.uzh.ch/zi/cl/surveys/index.php/469669?lang=en>. Further information will be sent to you by email shortly afterwards. Thank you very much for your time and interest. I wish you a wonderful day. Warm regards, Oriane Pierrès Post-doc, AI Buddy project Digital Society Initiative (DSI) Rämistrasse 69 8001 Zürich Personal profile on the<https://www.dsi.uzh.ch/de/people/researchers/dsi-postdocs/opierres.html> <https://www.dsi.uzh.ch/de/people/researchers/dsi-postdocs/opierres.html> DSI website<https://www.dsi.uzh.ch/de/people/researchers/dsi-postdocs/opierres.html>

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PhD Defense and After-Care
by Boll, Marian Alexander (INF) 09 Dec '25

09 Dec '25

Dear colleagues, I kindly invite you to join my defense* next week on Tuesday (16.12.) 16:30 at Engehalde 8, Seminarraum 109. I would be glad if you'd also join an Apéro at the Schmiede afterward. If the weather allows it and people are in the mood, we may then go to the Sternenmarkt for a Glühwy. Cheers Alex *Dissertation Title: Bridging the Data Desert: Mitigating Challenges of Model Accessibility in Simulink Research Abstract: Simulink is the industry standard for model-driven development in safety-critical domains such as automotive, aerospace, and medical devices. However, empirical research in the context of Simulink faces a persistent challenge: a scarcity of high-quality, industry-representative models that are essential for rigorous tool evaluation, empirical validation, and reproducible studies. This scarcity not only slows down scientific progress but also contributes to a replication crisis in the field -- primarily due to the unavailability of experimental models. This thesis addresses this challenge through three interconnected contributions, grounded in a multi-method approach that includes a systematic literature review, empirical case studies, community surveys, dataset analysis, and tool prototyping and validation: * A diagnosis of model scarcity demonstrating that the lack of models limits the ability to conduct empirical research and also contributes to only 9\% of Simulink tool studies meeting replicability criteria (i.e., all artifacts available). * An assessment of existing open-source Simulink models and datasets, evaluating their suitability for empirical research and investigating their limitations in scale, complexity, and industrial realism. Through case studies -- including model matching, analyzing bus architecture of Simulink models, and investigating commenting practices -- we demonstrate that open-source models, while imperfect, can serve as valuable research subjects for empirical investigation when carefully selected and used appropriately. * To address the lack of (i) large-scale and (ii) industry-representative models, we developed two novel tools: (i) GRANDSLAM, a linearly scaling synthesizer for Simulink that generates models with adjustable properties, enabling the synthesis of very large open-source models; (ii) SMOKE, a model anonymizer that removes sensitive information from Simulink models while preserving their structural properties, thus facilitating the sharing of real-world models without violating intellectual property constraints. Our work complements and extends contemporary datasets by showing their suitability for empirical research and providing tools for their expansion. By lowering the barriers to data access, we advance open science in model-driven engineering, enabling replicable studies, specifically large-scale studies that were previously infeasible. The contributions of this thesis are foundational: they narrow the "data desert" in Simulink research and foster collaboration through shareable resources. Beyond immediate applications, our tools and findings support standardized benchmarks, comparative tool evaluations, and longitudinal studies of modeling practices -- ultimately strengthening the empirical rigor and industrial relevance of Simulink research. In summary, this thesis provides both the evidence of a critical gap in Simulink research and practical solutions to address it, offering a pathway toward more transparent, reproducible, and impactful model-driven engineering.

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Annual Actual A+ Academic Achievements (5A 2025)
by Boll, Marian Alexander (INF) 03 Dec '25

03 Dec '25

Dear all, you are hereby cordially invited to send to me your submissions for your actual academic achievements of this year. Publications are one thing, but the real currency to be measured by are: * Most dramatic paper title (title or subtitle) * Best acronym (for a tool or approach) * Most beautiful figure/plot (non-vector graphics are desk rejected) * Most fitting meme used in a talk Just DM me or email me your submission. I will sponsor prizes. The winners will be announced on our next tenure meeting. Cheers Alex

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1st International Workshop on AI Code QUality, Integrity & REliability
by Christian Cachin 03 Dec '25

03 Dec '25

FYI, please consider this workshop colocated with EDCC (European Dependable Computing Conference) next year. ACQUIRE 2026 The 1st International Workshop on AI Code QUality, Integrity & REliability Tue 7 April 2026, Canterbury, UK https://acquire-workshop.github.io/2026/index.html Large Language Models are already writing, reviewing, and repairing code, yet the community lacks a rigorous, shared basis for judging whether these AI-produced artifacts are dependable throughout real software lifecycles. Today’s emphasis on benchmark accuracy obscures risks that matter in practice: silent hallucinations, insecure toolchains and prompts, brittle behavior under distribution shift, opaque provenance, and evidence that cannot be audited or reproduced. ACQUIRE’26 responds to this gap by convening AI and Software Engineering researchers and practitioners to refocus the conversation from raw performance to verifiable quality, grounded in auditable taxonomies and metrics, assurance cases and transparent and reproducible evidence. The workshop’s aim is to make AI-for-code not just powerful, but trustworthy and dependable, encompassing all aspects of software quality, including security, maintainability, correctness and performance. We welcome contributions that address the following areas: Quality & assurance: taxonomies, auditable metrics, conformance profiles, and safety/assurance cases for LLMs and agents for code tasks; Security of models & supply chain: threat models spanning models, data, prompts, and toolchains, with provenance, SBOM/AI-BOM, signing, and attestation; Robustness in practice: hallucination detection/mitigation, shift- and fault-tolerance, vulnerability detection and patch quality, and CI/CD gating with runtime guards; Evidence & reproducibility: open benchmarks, standardized reporting for datasets, metrics, prompts, agents, and protocols, and certification-oriented evaluation. Cross-cutting themes include human-AI collaboration (uncertainty display, attribution), and the impact of AI on maintainability and technical debt. We welcome empirical studies, methods, tools, and experience reports, especially those that deliver auditable evidence, align on taxonomies and reporting schemas, advance provenance and attestation practices, and demonstrate robust, reproducible evaluation under real-world and adversarial conditions. Submissions reporting negative results or unexpected findings are also welcome, as they offer valuable insights. -- Christian Cachin email: christian.cachin(a)unibe.ch Cryptology and Data Security Group web: crypto.unibe.ch/cc Institute of Computer Science tel: +41 31 684 8560 University of Bern Neubrückstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

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Personal/Professioanl Update and Future Plans
by Panichella, Sebastiano (INF) 02 Dec '25

02 Dec '25

Dear all, I would like to share some personal news directly with you, especially since I have noticed that information has started circulating informally, and I believe it is important that you hear it from me first. I have recently accepted an offer to join AI4I – Artificial Intelligence for Industries, the new national AI center in Italy, as Head of Laboratory. This new role will give me a level of independence, autonomy, and leadership that, unfortunately, neither UniBe nor other Swiss institutions were able to offer at this stage of my career. This opportunity represents a natural and timely step forward for me. I want to underline how deeply I value my time within the Software Engineering Group. Working with each of you—scientifically and personally—has been one of the highlights of my career. SEG has shaped the researcher I am today, and I am sincerely grateful for the collaborations, discussions, and support I have received over the last year or so. However, the moment has come for me to build and lead my own team, pursue my research vision with full independence, and develop a laboratory dedicated to my long-term agenda, while maintaining strong scientific ties with SEG. My goal is not to distance myself from the group, but rather to evolve into a new role from which I can continue to collaborate meaningfully with SEG and other groups. Nothing will change abruptly. My official start at AI4I will be part-time from February 2026, with a gradual transition throughout the year. I will continue working with the SEG members already collaborating with me—whom I have informed personally some time ago—and I expect ongoing scientific exchanges and joint initiatives in the future. For the moment, I kindly ask you to keep this information confidential within the group until AI4I oof mysel handle the official communications. I look forward to continuing our interactions over the coming months, and I sincerely hope to maintain—and even strengthen—our collaborations in the long run. SEG will always remain an important scientific home for me. Warm regards, Sebastiano

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MINT-Tag
by Timo Kehrer 26 Nov '25

26 Nov '25

Dear all, I need some volunteers doing (interactive) talks on these two events: MINT: https://www.unibe.ch/studium/studieninteressierte/maturandinnen__und__matur… MIT: https://www.unibe.ch/studium/studienangebote/master/informationstage/index_… For both events: It's about 30 mins, generic title is "A Primer on your Research" (to be refined by you), target group is high school students transitioning towards university. Each of the events could be done by just one group member, but forming a group of 2 could be more fun. Doesn't have to be the same people for both events. Constraint: Language of MINT should be German. There is still plenty of time, so no need to rush. But if you could imagine doing this, please let me know. Best, Timo

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Fwd: Postdoc in AI-based program repair (Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden)
by Panichella, Sebastiano (INF) 21 Nov '25

21 Nov '25

JFYI :) ________________________________ From: Philipp Leitner <philipp.leitner(a)chalmers.se> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2025 10:11:25 AM To: Gregory Gay <ggay(a)chalmers.se>; Martin Monperrus <monperrus(a)kth.se> Subject: FW: Postdoc in AI-based program repair (Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden) You don't often get email from philipp.leitner(a)chalmers.se. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> Dear friends and colleagues, I am currently looking for a postdoc to join my group at Chalmers. I would be extremely thankful if you could advertise this position in your circles and inform interested students about this opportunity. @Gregory Gay<mailto:ggay@chalmers.se> @Martin Monperrus<mailto:monperrus@kth.se> would you please also forward the below email to the WASP Software cluster? Thank you in advance! /philipp From: Philipp Leitner <philipp.leitner(a)chalmers.se> Date: Friday, 21 November 2025 at 09:22 To: seworld(a)sigsoft.org <seworld(a)sigsoft.org> Subject: Postdoc in AI-based program repair (Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden) Dear Colleagues, I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher at the Division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden). The position is broadly in the area of AI-based program repair, with a particular focus on software performance optimization. As a postdoc, you will join Chalmers for (up to) 2-3 years and work with me, my excellent doctoral students, and the rest of the software engineering crowd at Chalmers / Gothenburg University on research in the areas of performance engineering, agentic software engineering, and program generation. I am looking for candidates with experience publishing in top software engineering venues (e.g., ICSE, FSE, TSE, or similar) and a drive to elevate their research to the next level. The position (incl. application link): https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/work-with-us/vacancies/?rmpage=jo… Info about the lab: http://icet-lab.eu<http://icet-lab.eu/> Interaction Design and Software Engineering at Chalmers: https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/cse/our-research/interaction-design-… Applications will be accepted until Dec 18th. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me if you have questions regarding this position. Philipp Leitner Associate Professor, Chalmers University of Technology http://www.icet-lab.eu<http://icet-lab.eu/>

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Fwd: [sira-news] TODAY: SIRA Brown Bag Talk by Martin Jaggi 13:15-14:15 at EPFL and online
by Timo Kehrer 21 Nov '25

21 Nov '25

... Short reminder for those being interested in this. Best, Timo -------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: [sira-news] TODAY: SIRA Brown Bag Talk by Martin Jaggi 13:15-14:15 at EPFL and online Datum: Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:12:22 +0100 Von: Martin Glinz <glinz(a)ifi.uzh.ch> An: sira-news(a)list.inf.unibe.ch Dear SIRA members, Don’t miss today’s SIRA Brown Bag Talk on Apertus, the new Swiss open LLM! Date and time: Friday November 21, 2025 13:15-14:15 Speaker: Martin Jaggi (EPFL) Title: Apertus: Democratizing Open and Compliant LLMs for Global Language Environments Venue: - Physically at EPFL, BC Building, room BC 420 and - Online at https://uzh.zoom.us/j/66608357823?pwd=cNAvZKibfpI06bb4zpgMKtREbngvhZ.1 Abstract: We present Apertus, a fully open suite of large language models (LLMs) designed to address two systemic shortcomings in today's open model ecosystem: data compliance and multilingual representation. Unlike many prior models that release weights without reproducible data pipelines or regard for content-owner rights, Apertus models are pretrained exclusively on openly available data, retroactively respecting robots.txt URL exclusions and filtering for non-permissive, toxic, and personally identifiable content. To mitigate risks of memorization, we adopt the Goldfish objective during pretraining, strongly suppressing verbatim recall of data while retaining downstream task performance. The Apertus models also expand multilingual coverage, training on 15T tokens from over 1800 languages, with ~40% of pretraining data allocated to non-English content. Released at 8B and 70B scales, Apertus approaches state-of-the-art results among fully open models on multilingual benchmarks, rivalling or surpassing open-weight counterparts. Beyond model weights, we release all scientific artifacts from our development cycle with a permissive license, including data preparation scripts, checkpoints, evaluation suites, and training code, enabling transparent audit and extension. Link: https://www.swiss-ai.org/apertus Bio: MARTIN JAGGI is an associate professor at EPFL, where he is leading the Machine Learning and Optimization Laboratory. Before that, he was a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, at the Simons Institute in Berkeley, and at École Polytechnique in Paris. He has earned his PhD in Machine Learning and Optimization from ETH Zurich in 2011, and a MSc in Mathematics also from ETH Zurich. You find this announcement also at https://sira.swissinformatics.org. Please forward this invitation also to your PhD students and postdocs. Right after Martin Jaggi’s talk, the 2025 Annual SIRA Conference meeting will take place (same place, also physically and online). All SIRA members are invited to attend. However, only those members who are SIRA representatives or official substitutes for SIRA representatives have a vote. Best regards Martin Glinz SIRA President

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SEG Fondue Event on Friday, Nov. 28
by Timo Kehrer 20 Nov '25

20 Nov '25

Dear SEGies Winter has arrived, which means it’s time to uphold tradition and enjoy a proper fondue together before the year ends. This year’s fondue evening will take place on *Friday, 28 November 2025*, *starting around 17:00*. As this is a privately organized event, costs are covered by participants. If you would like to join the fondue session, please (i) accept this calendar invite and (ii) hand CHF 20 in cash to Yael, Manuel, or Roman (Bögli). This allows us to estimate attendance and take care of procuring food, drinks, and equipment efficiently. Registration deadline is *Wednesday 26. November, 23:59 Bern Time*. Given this is a crowdsourced event, helping hands during the evening with preparation, fondue stirring, and cleanup is appreciated and will be rewarded with extra kudos. Special thanks to Yael, Roman and Manuel for initiating this and taking care of the planning! Best, Timo

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Software Engineering Seminar Presentations
by Timo Kehrer 18 Nov '25

18 Nov '25

Dear all, The end of the semester is approaching, and it's time to start planning the seminar presentations. As always, the most natural presentation dates are the "usual" seminar slots on Tuesday morning, specifically: - Tuesday Dec. 9, from 8:30-12:00 - Tuesday Dec. 16, from 8:30-12:00 If students are not yet ready to present, it's fine to present in January. I propose the following date: - Tuesday, Jan 20, from 8:30-12:00 If needed, we can have a "backup" presentation day in the beginning of February. ACTION ITEM (supervisors): Please discuss the possible dates with your supervised students and just reserve the concrete time slot in our calendar. Per talk, we should reserve 30 mins., split into 15-20 mins presentation and about 10 mins. for Q&A. ACTION ITEM (supervisors): Please also note that we have a "presentation checklist" with some DOs and DONTs, serving as a good starting point for preparing the students for their talk: https://seg.inf.unibe.ch/teaching/resources/presentation-checklist/ ACTION ITEM (all): Please mark the presentation slots in your calendar. I am not insisting on physical presence, but it's always much nicer if the students do not present their work in front of an almost empty audience. Best, Timo

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