Candidates for the computer science tenure-track faculty position openings in the College of Computing will be visiting campus this semester, including Ali Shokri.
Bio
Ali Shokri is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the ECE Department at Virginia Tech, working at the intersection of software productivity and quality. His research focuses on formally verified LLM-based approaches, aiming to improve software efficiency and reliability. He earned his Ph.D. in Computing and Information Sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2023, where his research on software synthesis was recognized as the first-place award winner at ASE ’21. His work has been published in ICSE, OOPSLA, ASE, ICPC, and ICSA, covering areas such as program analysis, code comprehension, software architecture, security, and synthesis.
During his time at Google and PARC as a Ph.D. research intern, he contributed to ML-based synthesis in Google’s Bard project as well as evolutionary-based synthesis in PARC’s cyber-physical controller reconstruction project. These efforts resulted in two inventions, pending patents. Beyond research, Ali is an active member of the software engineering and security community, serving as a PC member for leading conferences such as ICSE, ASE, USENIX, SANER, S&P, MSR, ICPC, ECOOP, SCAM, ISSTA, and PLDI, as well as a reviewer for top journals including TSE, IEEE Software, and JSS. He has mentored multiple undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students and has submitted grant proposals as a PI and co-PI.
Date and time of visit: Friday, March 21, 2025, 1 p.m. ET, with a 4 p.m. social hour in Rekhi 218
Location: Rekhi G005 or via Zoom at https://michigantech.zoom.us/j/89887503297
Abstract
When software productivity meets code quality
Software is at the core of modern society, driving advancements in science and industry. However, software development remains inherently complex and resource-intensive.
Developers spend, on average, 20 to 40 percent of their time writing new code, yet inefficient workflows, redundant tasks, and poor tooling hinder progress. With global software development expenditures exceeding $1.4 trillion annually, improving productivity can significantly reduce costs and expedite delivery. Meanwhile, quality assurance and debugging account for 50 percent or more of total development costs, with studies showing that the cost of fixing defects can increase by up to 100 times if detected late in the lifecycle. Despite the immense focus on both productivity and quality, these two aspects of software engineering are often treated as separate concerns, leading to inefficiencies and compromises.
In this talk, I will present a novel approach to bridging software productivity and quality by introducing a framework that unifies both aspects. By aligning development efficiency with quality assurance from the outset, we can enable automated software construction approaches that accelerate implementation while ensuring both syntactic and semantic correctness of the code. I will also share insights from my research on addressing this gap, paving the way for a more sustainable and scalable future in software engineering.
About the College of Computing
The Michigan Tech College of Computing, established in 2019, is the first academic unit in Michigan dedicated solely to computing, and one of only a handful such academic units in the United States. The college is composed of two academic departments. The Computer Science department offers four bachelor of science programs in computer science, cybersecurity, data science, and software engineering; four master of science programs in applied computer science, computer science, cybersecurity, and data science; and a doctoral program in computer science. The Applied Computing department offers four bachelor of science programs in cybersecurity, electrical engineering technology, information technology, and mechatronics; and two master of science programs in health informatics and mechatronics. The college also helps to administer an interdisciplinary doctoral program in computational science and engineering.Questions? Contact us at computing@mtu.edu.
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