I lead the Practical and Actionable Software Engineering Research (PASER) group at Auburn University. Members of the PASER group work on software engineering research problems that have implications for practitioners.
Advisees
- Wan-Syun
Anita
Cheng, M.Sc. Student, Auburn University Web - Yue Zhang, PhD Student, Auburn University Web
- Pemsith Mendis, PhD Student, Auburn University Web
- Shazibul Islam Shamim, PhD Student, Auburn University Web
Collaborators
- Syed Rafiul Hussain, Assistant Professor, Penn State University Web
- Rahul Pandita, Staff Researcher, GitHub, USA Web
- Chris Parnin, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, USA Web
- Stacy Prowell, Distinguished Researcher, Oak Ridge National Lab, TN Web
- Shubhra Kanti Karmaker Santu, Assistant Professor, Auburn University Web
- Hossain Shahriar, Associate Professor, University of West Florida Web
- Anthony Skjellum, Director, SimCenter; Professor, Computer Science, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, TN Web
Alumni
- Farzana Ahmed Bhuiyan (PhD), first appointment as
research scientist
at Meta (formerly known as Facebook) - Dibyendu Brinto Bose (BSc), first appointment as
PhD student
at Virginia Tech - Carlos Medrano (BSc), first appointment as
site reliability engineer
at Google - Justin Murphy (MSc), first appointment as
security analyst
at CISA, DHS - Raunak Shakya (MSc), first appointment as
software engineer
at Energy Domain - Anceito Rivera (BSc), first appointment as
software engineer
at SAIC
Awarded External Grants
- Sole PI, SHF: Core: Small: Resilient Operations for Deployment Units Used in Container Orchestration, U.S. National Science Foundation (October 2023 - September 2026). Amount: 553,295 USD (Total), 553,295 USD (Share of Auburn University).
- Sole PI, REU Supplement for SaTC: TTP: Small: eSLIC: Enhanced Security Static Analysis for Configuration Scripts, U.S. National Science Foundation (May 2023 - August 2024). Amount: 12,000 USD (Total), 12,000 USD (Share of Auburn University).
- Co-PI, Hands-on Learning Modules for Software Supply Chain Security Education, U.S. National Security Agency (February 2023 - August 2025). PI: Hossain Shahriar, and Nazmus Sakib (Kennesaw State University), Amount: 75,000 USD (Total), 34,968 USD (Share of Auburn University).
- Lead PI, SaTC: EDU: Authentic Learning Modules for DevOps Security Education, National Science Foundation (June 2022 - Sep 2025). Co-PI: Hossain Shahriar (Kennessaw State University) and Fan Wu (Tuskegee University), Amount: 399,882 USD (Total), 154,006 USD (Share of Auburn University).
- Co-PI, Tennessee Tech Cybercorps Renewal: An Enahnced and Integrated Scholar Experience in Cybersecurity, National Science Foundation (July 2021 - July 2022), Amount: 1,917,081 USD. PI: Muhammad Ismail, Co-PI: Denis Ulybychev, Eric Brown, Maanak Gupta (Tennessee Tech University)
- Lead PI, Cybersecurity Mini Grant (Sub-award), National Science Foundation (Dec 2020 - Mar 2021), Amount: 5,000 USD. Co-PI: Dennis Ulybychev (Tennessee Tech University)
- Lead PI, SaTC: TTP: Small: eSLIC: Enhanced Security Static Analysis for Detecting Insecure Configuration Scripts, National Science Foundation (Oct 2020 - Sep 2023). Co-PI: Chris Parnin (NC State University), Amount: 444,720 USD (Total), 177,995 USD (Share of Auburn University).
- Co-PI, EDGE Curriculum Development Grant, Tennessee Tech University (Jan 2020 - May 2020), PI: Maanak Gupta (Tennessee Tech University), Amount: 5,000 USD (Total)
Noteworthy Achievements of PASERs
- Shazibul Islam Shamim, Bronze Award, Student Research Competition, ESEC/FSE 2021
- Akond Rahman, Distinguished Reviewer, Mining Software Repositories (MSR) 2021
- Akond Rahman, 2019-2020 Nominee for the Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, NC State University
- Akond Rahman, 2019-2020 COE Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award, NC State University
- Akond Rahman, 2019-2020 CSC Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, NC State University
- Farzana Ahamed Bhuiyan, Best Student Paper Award, 33rd Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS) 2020
- Akond Rahman, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, ICSE 2019 - Technical Track
- Akond Rahman, ACM SIGSOFT Best Paper Award, ICSE 2018 - Doctoral Symposium
- Akond Rahman, Microsoft Open Source Challenge 2016 - Grand Prize
- Shazibul Islam Shamim, Best Poster Award, Bioinformatics and Stringology Conference (BIOS) 2015