26.10.2020Alberto Bacchelli Associate Professor ad personam for Empirical Software Engineering

Alberto Bacchelli received 2017 a SNSF Professorship, with which he established the «Zurich Empirical Software Engineering Team» (ZEST) at IfI. Before joining IfI and UZH, he has been assistant professor at TU Delft in the Software Engineering Research Group. His main focus is on developing and applying data science processes and techniques to conduct empirical experiments on complex knowledge-based activities, particularly the development of software. His broader vision is to move software engineering away from decisions based on intuition into solutions created using data-driven mathematical models, making use of the large amount of information available during the software engineering process.

At IfI Alberto Bacchelli appreciates the scientific freedom given to the research groups as well as the collegiality among the professors. He finds it very supportive that everyone is on the lookout for starting new research collaborations and projects to bring competencies and expertise together. Also he esteems being in the WWF Faculty because it aligns well with his research focus and methods.

Alberto Bacchelli's aim as newly appointed Professor: «I plan to continue teaching fundamental software courses such as software construction and the newly added course software testing. Last year the course software testing has gained a lot of interest among my students. Research-wise, I will continue with my work on code review – there are still many open research challenges with strong potential for both practical applications and fundamental scientific advancements. I am also planning to widen the scope of my research to software security and fuzz testing, focusing on both basic and applied research.»