🔬 Research: Automatically generated tests are useful only when they represent meaningful behaviours of the software system. My research studies how to generate, validate, and interpret trustworthy test evidence for learning-enabled, autonomous, and cyber-physical software. Check my research.
👤 Short bio: I am an Associate Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Udine, where I lead the Software Engineering Research Unit within the MADS Laboratory. I also serve on the board of the PhD Programme in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana. Learn more about my career.
🎓 Teaching and supervision: I teach software engineering, software testing, and informatics across computer science and interdisciplinary programmes. I supervise PhD, MSc, and BSc research in software testing and empirical software engineering. Explore our team.
💰 Funded projects: In the ERC Advanced Grant PRECRIME, I led the work package on Test Input Generation for deep-learning-based software systems. At Udine, I served as local scientific coordinator and work-package scientific coordinator in two NextGenerationEU SERICS projects: SecCo-OC, on security-policy languages and behavioural models for containers, and SOP, on fuzz-testing techniques. More information about funded projects.
🛎️ Main service roles: I serve on the Editorial Boards of Empirical Software Engineering and Software Engineering Nexus. I also contribute to the organization of, and serve on the programme committees of, leading software engineering conferences, including ICSE, ASE, FSE, ISSTA, ESEM, and ICST. More information about my academic service.
🏅 Qualifications: I obtained the Italian National Scientific Habilitation for Full Professor in Computer Science (01/B1) and Computer Engineering (09/H1).
📢 Join my group Fully funded PhD opening: Boundary-Aware Testing and Fuzzing for Trustworthy AI-Enabled and Agentic Software Systems. Deadline: 31 August 2026, 1:00 PM CEST. Details and application
Selected publications
The following publications represent the main development of my research on testing and quality assurance for learning-enabled, autonomous, and cyber-physical software. You can take a look at the full list of my publications.
- When and Why Test Generators for Deep Learning Produce Invalid Inputs (ICSE 2023.) Established my research direction on validity-aware test generation by investigating whether automatically generated inputs provide meaningful and reliable test evidence.
- Model-Based Exploration of the Frontier of Behaviours for Deep Learning System Testing (ESEC/FSE 2020.) Introduced the exploration of behavioural boundaries of learning-enabled software components.
- Testing Machine Learning-Based Systems: A Systematic Mapping (Empirical Software Engineering, 2020.) Systematized the challenges, methods, and open research questions in testing machine-learning-based software systems.
- Focused Test Generation for Autonomous Driving Systems (ACM TOSEM, 2024.) Extended focused testing to autonomous-driving systems and safety-relevant simulation scenarios.
- Benchmarking Generative AI Models for Deep Learning Test Input Generation (ICST 2025 — 🏆 Best Paper Award.) Evaluated generative AI models as test input generators and established the foundation of my current work on GenAI-supported software testing.