Publications

A selection of SAGE Lab publications from 2021 onward. Underlined authors are students advised in the lab; bold indicates the lab director, Dr. Kevin Moran.

Conference & Journal Publications

2026

Automated Program Repair for UI-centric Android Bugs: How Far are We?

Junayed Mahmud, Sparsh Pandey, Nadeeshan De Silva, Atish Kumar Dipongkor, JingJing Wu, Oscar Chaparro, Mattia Fazzini, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering (PACMSE), Vol. 3, ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2026), Oakland, California, USA, October 3rd-9th, to appear 23% acceptance rate

pdf github zenodo
Lost in Transmission: An Information-Theoretic Account of Unsupervised Software Traceability

D. Rodriguez-Cardenas, David N. Palacio, Logan Fecko, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME’26), Industry Track, Benevento, Italy, September 14th-18th, to appear

pdf github
Fusing UI Structure and Semantics for Feature-Oriented App Screen Retrieval and Clustering

Arun Krishnavajjala, Yanfu Yan, Shurnal Pothagoni, Denys Poshyvanyk, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME’26), Benevento, Italy, September 14th-18th, to appear 26% acceptance rate

pdf github zenodo
Test Coverage Analysis of Agentic Pull Requests

Atish Kumar Dipongkor, Talank Baral, Wing Lam, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME’26), Vision and Emerging Results Track, Benevento, Italy, September 14th-18th, to appear

pdf github zenodo
Mutation-based Evaluation of Cryptographic API-Misuse Detectors

Amit Seal Ami, Scott Marsden, Kevin Moran, Adwait Nadkarni, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, 2026, accepted

pdf github

2025

Failure by Interference: Language Models Make Balanced Parentheses Errors When Faulty Mechanisms Overshadow Sound Ones

Daking Rai, Samuel Miller, Kevin Moran, Ziyu Yao

Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS’25), San Diego, California, December 2nd-7th, 2025, 23 pages

pdf github
Generating Failure-based Oracles to Support Testing of Reported Bugs in Android Apps

Jack Johnson, Junayed Mahmud, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Mattia Fazzini

Proceedings of the 40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE’25), Seoul, South Korea, November 16th-20th, 2025, 12 pages

pdf zenodo
LadyBug: A GitHub Bot for UI-Enhanced Bug Localization in Mobile Apps

Junayed Mahmud, James Chen, Terry Achille, Camilo Alvarez-Velez, Darren Dean Bansil, Patrick Ijieh, Samar Karanch, Nadeeshan De Silva, Oscar Chaparro, Andrian Marcus, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Maintenance & Evolution (ICSME’25), Aukland, New Zealand, September 7th-12th, 2025, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
Combining Language and App UI Analysis for the Automated Assessment of Bug Reproduction Steps

Junayed Mahmud*, Antu Saha*, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Andrian Marcus (*co-first authors)

Proceedings of the 33rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC’25), Ottawa, Canada, April 27th-28th, 2025, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
Testing Practices, Challenges, and Developer Perspectives in Open-Source IoT Platforms

Daniel Rodriquez-Cardenas, Safwat Ali Khan, Prianka Mandal, Adwait Nadkarni, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST’25), Naples, Italy, March 31st-April 4th, 2025, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
Can You Mimic Me? Exploring the Use of Android Record & Replay Techniques in Debugging

Zihe Song, S M Hasan Mansur, Ravishka Shemal Rathnasuriya, Yumna Fatima, Wei Yang, Kevin Moran, Wing Lam

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MobileSoft’25), Ottawa, Canada, April 26th-28th, 2025, 12 pages

pdf website data

2024

Toward the Automated Localization of Buggy Mobile App UIs from Bug Descriptions

Antu Saha, Yang Song, Junayed Mahmud, Ying Zhou, Kevin Moran, Oscar Chaparro

Proceedings of the 33rd ACM SigSoft International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA’24), Vienna, Austria, September 16th-20th, 2024, 13 pages

pdf github zenodo
Toward a Theory of Causation for Interpreting Neural Code Models

David N. Palacio, Alejandro Velasco, Nathan Cooper, Alvaro Rodriguez, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), to appear, 28 pages

pdf github
Enhancing Code Understanding for Impact Analysis by Combining Transformers and Program Dependence Graphs

Yanfu Yan, Nathan Cooper, Kevin Moran, Gabriele Bavota, Denys Poshyvanyk, Steve Rich

Proceedings ofthe 2024 Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2024), Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, Brazil,July 15th-19th, 2024

pdf github zenodo
MotorEase: Automated Detection of Motor Impairment Accessibility Issues in Mobile App UIs

Arun Krishnavajjala, S M Hasan Mansur, Justin Jose, Kevin Moran

Proceedings ofthe 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 14th-20th, 2024, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
On Using GUI Interaction Data to Improve Text Retrieval-based Bug Localization

Junayed Mahmud, Nadeeshan De Silva, Safwat Ali Khan, Seyed Hooman Mostafavi, S M Hasan Mansur, Oscar Chaparro, Andrian Marcus, Kevin Moran

Proceedings ofthe 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 14th-20th, 2024, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
Semantic GUI Scene Learning and Video Alignment for Detecting Duplicate Video-based Bug Reports

Yanfu Yan, Nathan Cooper, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings ofthe 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 14th-20th, 2024, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
GuiEvo: Automated Evolution of Mobile App UIs

Sabiha Salma, SM Hasan Mansur, Yule Zhang, Kevin Moran

Proceedings ofthe 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 15th-16th, 2024, 12 pages

pdf github
Automating GUI-based Test Oracles for Mobile Apps

Kesina Baral, Jack Johnson, Junayed Mahmud, Sabiha Salma, Mattia Fazzini, Julia Rubin, Jeff Offutt, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 15th-16th, 2024, 12 pages

pdf github
AURORA: Navigating UI Tarpits via Automated Neural Screen Understanding

Safwat Ali Khan, Wenyu Wang, Yiran Ren, Bin Zhu, Jiangfan Shi, Alyssa McGowan, Wing Lam, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing (ICST 2024), Toronto, Canada, May 27th-31st, 2024, 12 pages

pdf
"False negative - that one is going to kill you." - Understanding Industry Perspectives of Static Analysis-based Security Testing

Amit Seal Ami, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk, Adwait Nadkarni

Proceedings of the45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland 2024), San Francisco, California, May 20th-23rd, 2024, 15 pages

🏆 Distinguished Paper Award

pdf github

2023

A Comparative Study of Transformer-based Neural Text Representation Techniques on Bug Triaging

Atish Kumar Dipongkor, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2023), Kirchberg, Luxembourg, September 11-15, 2023, 12 pages

pdf github
AidUI: Toward Automated Recognition of Dark Patterns in User Interfaces

SM Hasan Mansur, Sabiha Salma, Damilola Awofisayo, Kevin Moran

Proceedings ofthe 45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023), Melbourne, Australia, May 14th-20th, 2023, 12 pages

pdf github zenodo
Towards a Universal Python: Translating the Natural Modality of Python into Other Human Languages

Joshua Otten, Antonios Anastasopoulos, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the39th International Conference on Software Maintenance & Evolution (ICSME 2023), New Ideas and Emerging Research (NIER Track), Bogota, Colombia, October 1st-6th, 2023, 6 pages

pdf
Helion: Enabling Natural Testing of Smart Homes

Priyanka Mandal, Sunil Manandhar, Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk, Adwait Nadkarni

Proceedings ofThe 2023 ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023), San Francisco, California, Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, December 3rd-9th, 2023

pdf github
MASC: A Tool for Mutation-based Evaluation of Static Crypto-API Misuse Detectors

Amit Seal Ami, Syed Yusuf Ahmed, Radowan Mahmud Redoy, Nathan Cooper, Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk, Adwait Nadkarni

Proceedings ofthe 2023 ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023), San Francisco, California, Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, December 3rd-9th, 2023

pdf github
ChatGPT and Software Testing Education: Promises & Perils

Sajed Jalil, Suzzana Rafi, Thomas D. LaToza, Kevin Moran, Wing Lam

Proceedings of the 2nd Software Testing Education Workshop (TestEd’23), co-located with ICST’23, Dublin, Ireland, April 16th, 2023

pdf github zenodo
BURT: A Chatbot for Interactive Bug Reporting

Yang Song, Junayed Mahmud, Nadasheen De Silva, Ying Zhou, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Andrian Marcus, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023), Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, Melbourne, Australia, May 14th-20th, 2023

pdf github data video
AVGUST: A Tool for Generating Usage-Based Tests from Videos of App Executions

Saghar Talebipour, Hyojae Park, Kesina Baral, Leon Yee, Safwat Ali Khan, Kevin Moran, Yuriy Brun, Nenad Medvidovic, Yixue Zhao

Proceedings of the 45th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023), Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, Melbourne, Australia, May 14th-20th, 2023

pdf github zenodo

2022

AVGUST: Automating Usage-based Test Generation from Videos of App Executions

Yixue Zhao, Saghar Talebipour, Kesina Baral, Hyojae Park, Leon Yee, Safwat Ali Khan, Yuriy Brun, Nenad Medvidovic, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2022), Singapore, November 14th-18th, 2022

pdf data github
Toward Interactive Bug Reporting for (Android App) End Users

Yang Song, Junayed Mahmud, Ying Zhou, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Andrian Marcus, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2022), Singapore, November 14th-18th, 2022

pdf github data video
Enhancing Mobile App Bug Reporting via Real-time Understanding of Reproduction Steps

Mattia Fazzini, Kevin Moran, Carlos Bernal Cárdenas, Tyler Wendland, Alessandro Orso, Denys Poshyvanyk

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), to appear, 26 pages

pdf data zenodo
Translating Video Recordings of Complex Mobile App UI Gestures into Replayable Scenarios for Native & Hybrid Apps

Carlos Bernal Cárdenas, Nathan Cooper, Madeleine Havranek, Kevin Moran, Oscar Chaparro, Denys Poshyvanyk, Andrian Marcus

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), to appear, 21 pages

pdf data github zenodo
Learning Patterns from User Interfaces to Support Software Engineering Tasks

Kevin Moran

CHI 2022 Workshop on Computational Approaches for Understanding, Generating, and Adapting User Interfaces (Computational UI@CHI’22), New Orleans, Louisiana, April 30th, 2022

pdf
An Empirical Investigation into the Use of Image Captioning for Automated Software Documentation

Kevin Moran, Ali Yachnes, George Purnell, Junayed Mahmud, Michele Tufano, Carlos Bernal-Cárdenas, Denys Poshyvanyk, Zach H-Doubler

Proceedings of the29th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER’22), Honolulu, Hawaii, March 15-18, 2022 24% acceptance rate

pdf data github zenodo
An Empirical Investigation into the Reproduction of Bug Reports for Android Apps

Jack Johnson, Junayed Mahmud, Tyler Wendland, Kevin Moran, Julia Rubin, Mattia Fazzini

Proceedings of the29th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER’22), Honolulu, Hawaii, March 15-18, 2022 24% acceptance rate

pdf data github
A Systematic Literature Review on the Use of Deep Learning in Software Engineering Research

Cody Watson, Nathan Cooper, David N. Palacio, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering & Methodology (TOSEM), to appear, 58 pages

pdf data github zenodo
Why Crypto-detectors Fail: A Systematic Evaluation of Cryptographic Misuse Detection Techniques

Amit Seal Ami, Nathan Cooper, Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk, Adwait Nadkarni

Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), May 22-26, 2022, to appear, 18 pages

pdf data

2021

Code to Comment Translation: A Comparative Study on Model Effectiveness & Errors

Junayed Mahmud, Fahim Faisal, Raihan Islam Arnob, Antonios Anastasopoulos, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the First Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Programming (NLP4Prog’21) Co-Located with ACL-IJCNLP’21, Virtual (originally Bangkok, Thailand), August 6th, 2021, to appear, 9 pages

pdf github zenodo
AndroR2: A Dataset of Manually-Reproduced Bug Reports for Android Apps

Tyler Wendland, Jingyang Sun, Junayed Mahmud, S.M. Hasan Mansur, Steven Huang, Kevin Moran, Julia Rubin, Mattia Fazzini

Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR’21), Data Showcase Track, Virtual (originally Madrid, Spain), May 17th - 19th, 2021, to appear, 5 pages

pdf data zenodo
It Takes Two to Tango: Combining Visual and Textual Information for Detecting Duplicate Video-Based Bug Reports

Nathan Cooper, Carlos Bernal-Cárdenas, Oscar Chaparro, Kevin Moran, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’21), Virtual (originally Madrid, Spain), May 25th - 28th, 2021, to appear, 13 pages

pdf data github zenodo
V2S: A Tool for Translating Video Recordings of Mobile App Usages into Replayable Scenarios

Madeleine Havranek, Carlos Bernal-Cárdenas, Nathan Cooper, Oscar Chaparro, Denys Poshyvanyk, Kevin Moran

Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’21) - Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, Virtual (originally Madrid, Spain), May 25th - 28th, 2021, to appear, 4 pages 37% acceptance rate

pdf tool github zenodo
Mutation-based Evaluation of Security-focused Static Analysis Tools for Android

Amit Seal Ami, Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Adwait Nadkarni, Denys Poshyvanyk

Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’21) - Formal Tool Demonstrations Track, Virtual (originally Madrid, Spain), May 25th - 28th, 2021, to appear, 4 pages 37% acceptance rate

pdf tool
Systematic Mutation-based Evaluation of the Soundness of Security-focused Android Static Analysis Techniques

Amit Seal Ami, Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Adwait Nadkarni, Denys Poshyvanyk

ACM Transactions on Security & Privacy (TOPS), accepted

pdf data
Security in Centralized Data Store-based Home Automation Platforms: A Systematic Analysis of Nest and Hue

Kaushal Kafle, Kevin Moran, Sunil Manandhar, Adwait Nadkarni, Denys Poshyvanyk

ACM Transactions on Cyber Physical Systems (TCPS), accepted

pdf

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