Research seminars – Candidates for Associate senior lecturer in Software Engineering

14:30–15:15

Engineering Secure Software Systems in the Age of AI - Sven Peldszus 

Sven Peldszus is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science, currently at Ruhr University Bochum, specializing in software security engineering and model-based program analysis techniques. He holds a Master's degree from the Technical University of Darmstadt and received his Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Koblenz-Landau. He received the CAST/GI Dissertation Award for IT Security, awarded annually to the best dissertation in IT security in Germany.

His research addresses a fundamental challenge in modern software development, the gap between planned security designs and its secure implementation, particularly in systems that integrate machine learning components. As his recent study on security engineering practices (ICSE 2025a) shows, developers struggle to implement security features, underscoring the need for more effective support. At the same time, as his large-scale study of ML-enabled systems (ICSE 2025b) reveals, modern software systems involve complex ML topologies, requiring specialized security features. Furthermore, it is unclear how sensitive information propagates through ML components in such systems, which impedes traditional analysis techniques, such as taint analysis, that could aid developers. To address these issues, Sven Peldszus investigates how planning artifacts, such as architectural models, can be leveraged to improve security analysis. 

In his talk, "Engineering Secure Software Systems in the Age of AI," Sven Peldszus will argue that securing intelligent systems requires more than just code-level techniques. He will present a model-informed engineering approach that uses planning artifacts to detect, contextualize, and mitigate security risks, helping to secure complex, machine learning (ML)-enabled systems.

15:15–16:00

Bias-Free Software Engineering: My Academic Evolution and Future Agenda - Iflaah Salman 

Iflaah Salman, PhD (University of Oulu), is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Engineering Science, Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Finland. She began her professional journey in the software industry, working as a software developer and quality assurance engineer, before transitioning into academia. Dr. Salman holds a PhD in Software Engineering. Her research interests are empirical software engineering, software testing, and human factors, including cognitive biases, emotions, and behaviour. She also explores the role of artificial intelligence in software engineering and investigates organisational aspects that influence software engineering practices. Her work has been published in leading venues, including IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Empirical Software Engineering. She is also an advocate of open data and open science.

16:00–16:45

Investigating Post-GDPR Privacy Preservation in the Android Ecosystem - Huasong Mark Meng

Dr Mark Meng is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. He earned his Bachelor's degree with Honours from Nanyang Technological University and his Master's and PhD degrees from the National University of Singapore. Prior to joining TUM, Mark was a Research Scientist at the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. His research focuses on software engineering and security, with a particular emphasis on AI and mobile security. His work on mobile security has led to the discovery of 8 CVEs. His research has been published in top-tier security and software engineering venues, including NDSS, TDSC, FSE, ICSE, and ASE, and has received the Distinguished Paper Award at ASE 2024.