About Me

I do software research. My students and I create tools and techniques that help developers build better software—by automatically testing, analyzing, and debugging its code and its development process.

Our approaches have had quite some impact in academia and industry. My Curriculum Vitae lists the most important achievements.

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Current Projects

Our research projects involve generating software tests, automated debugging and repair, analyzing mobile systems, analyzing user interfaces, and more; see our papers below for details. Our solutions typically apply and combine several techniques including dynamic analysis, static analysis, specification mining, test generation, natural language processing, machine learning, and formal languages.

My largest project these days is The Fuzzing Book—an interactive textbook on test generation (“fuzzing”) techniques. You can execute and edit the code right in your browser.

Current Papers

My papers can be found on Google Scholar, in the ACM Digital Library, and in DBLP. For recent works and preprints, check out my CISPA publication list.

Current Courses

In Summer 2020, we offer a seminar on advanced fuzzing techniques and a proseminar on automated testing and debugging. For Winter 2020/21, we plan to offer advanced courses on security testing and/or automated debugging.

My Group

At CISPA and Saarland University, I work with great students and Post-Docs from across the world on cutting-edge research.

We are constantly looking out for great students and Postdocs. Our positions are well paid and allow for highly productive research. If you’re interested in a PhD or Postdoc position, please apply at CISPA and state your specific interests.

Theses

If you are a student of Saarland University and have fun with automated program analysis, testing, and debugging, you might want to do a thesis with us. Here are the details on how to do a thesis with us.

My Blog

My blog has a mixture of various topics from academia and software development, often with a humorous touch. Here is a selection of popular posts:

What's it like to be a PhD student in Germany (2020-07-01)
When Results Are All That Matters: The Case of the Angora Fuzzer (2019-10-10)
Where your conference fees go to (2018-02-01)
Mit dem Fahrrad aus der Saarbrücker Innenstadt zur Uni (2017-04-26)
Twelve LaTeX packages to get your paper accepted (2017-01-13)
My first talk at a scientific conference: A complete and utter disaster (2016-05-23)
Twelve tips on how to prepare an ERC grant proposal (2013-02-23)
What makes good research? (2012-10-16)

All blog posts

Watch Me

I am a frequent speaker at events. Here are two recorded talks I am particularly proud of.

2020: Learning the Language of Failure

In my 2020 CASA Distinguished Lecture “Learning the Language of Failure”, I show some highlights of our current work:

how to automatically learn circumstances of a given failure, expressed over features of input elements;
how to automatically infer input languages as readable grammars, and how to use them for massive fuzzing; and
how to systematically and precisely characterize the set of inputs that causes a given failure – the “language of failure”.

Enjoy the show! Annotated slides are available, too.

2018: Outstanding Research Award Keynote

These days, I also spend quite some time giving career advice. In my ICSE 2018 SIGSOFT Award keynote, I unfold three lessons on impact in software engineering research:

Andreas Zeller