Monash Faculty of IT sponsors and chairs top software engineering conference’s grand return to Melbourne
14 May 2023 marked the start of the premier IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2023, held in Melbourne for the first time since 1992 – chaired by Australian Laureate Professor John Grundy with Monash Faculty of Information Technology among its gold sponsors.
Director of the Monash Human-centre Software Engineering (HumaniSE) Lab Professor John Grundy opened the week-long event, which featured industry forums, technical sessions, student research competitions and more.
‘It was a real privilege to host ICSE 2023 in Melbourne, with almost 1500 attendees from all around the world. We had a real blast with over 900 main conferences, co-located events and workshop papers presented, three wonderful keynotes, a Welcome to Country by two Wurundjeri women, a reception with Australian animals, a conference party at the Showtime Events Centre and Melbourne baristas onsite throughout,’ said Professor Grundy.
‘Thanks to the many Monash and local Software Engineering community staff and students for all of their volunteer work, our authors and attendees, our industry sponsors, and support from the State government for a wonderful event.’
Attendees enjoyed three keynote speeches, one from Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab Director Professor Sarah Pink on ‘Future Software for Life in Trusted Futures’ where she discussed the role emerging technologies should play in the future to best support humanity and the environment.
PhD student Sidong Feng and Dr Chunyang Chen from the Faculty of IT also took home one of the coveted ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards for their publication ‘Efficiency Matters: Speeding Up Automated Testing with GUI Rendering Inference’.
The Faculty's prominent presence and contributions to ICSE 2023 further solidified its position as a leading institution driving innovation and excellence in software engineering.
ICSE is the leading global software engineering conference, attracting top researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and explore the latest trends and innovations in the field.
The topics covered in this year’s submissions focused on a broad range of areas, including software engineering with and for AI, analysis and testing, and software analytics. Here are some noteworthy papers from the faculty:
Developing Software for Diverse Socio-Economic End Users: Lessons Learned from A Case Study of Fisherfolk Communities in Bangladesh
ACM Best Paper Award for SEIS Track
Dr Tanjila Kanij, Dr Misita Anwar, Professor Gillian Oliver, Dr Md Khalid Hossain
Due to low socio-economic status, digital and general literacy and many other similar factors, Bangladeshi fisherfolk have very diverse needs as software users. We designed a prototype software for tacit knowledge transfer among boat captains that adopts a co-creation process where the functionality and usability of the software is decided by the users themselves. We also proposed specific recommendations for future software development for users from low socio-economic backgrounds.
What Would You Do? An Ethical AI Quiz
Wei Teo, Ze Teoh, Dayang Abang Arabi, Morad Aboushadi, Khairenn Lai, Zhe Ng, Aastha Pant, Associate Professor Rashina Hoda, Dr Kla Tantithamthavorn, Professor Burak Turhan (University of Oulu)
Increasing the level of awareness and understanding of the perceptions among those who develop AI systems is a critical step to mitigating ethical issues in AI development. We developed an interactive, scenario-based ethical AI quiz that allows AI practitioners, including software engineers who develop AI systems, to assess their own awareness and perceptions about AI ethics. The experience of taking the quiz, and the feedback it provides, help AI practitioners understand gaps, identify opportunities to discuss ethical AI principles and issues, and improve their overall ethical practices in development scenarios.
Open Design Case Study -- A Crowdsourcing Effort to Curate Software Design Case Studies
Dr Chun Yong Chong, Dr Eunsuk Kang (Carnegie Mellon University), A.J. Perlis University Professor of Computer Science Mary Shaw (Carnegie Mellon University)
Using real-world software development case studies allows educators to reinforce the applicability of fundamental design concepts, relate the importance of evaluating design trade-offs to stakeholders’ requirements, and highlight the importance of upfront design. We proposed the ‘Open Design Case Study’, a repository to crowdsource and curate case studies for teaching software design courses. The platform will also allow educators and students to share, brainstorm and discuss design solutions based on case studies shared publicly on the repository.
AI-based Question Answering Assistance for Analysing Natural-language Requirements
Saad Ezzini (Lancaster University), Sallam Abualhaija (University of Luxembourg), Dr Chetan Arora, Associate Professor Mehrdad Sabetzadeh (University of Ottawa)
Requirements are prone to various defects, such as inconsistency and incompleteness, subjecting them to quality assurance processes often carried out manually. We proposed QAssist – a question-answering (QA) approach that provides automated assistance to stakeholders like requirements engineers when analysing natural language requirements. A novel initiative, QAssist brings together QA and external domain knowledge to address the challenge of when answers extend beyond the given requirements specification.