Ahmed E. Hassan

Ahmed E. Hassan (Ph.D., University of Waterloo) is a professor at Queen's University in the Queen's School of Computing, where he leads the Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL).^[1] He is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE in which recognition by both of these leading societies is quite rare, with <0.1% of IEEE members.^[2] In 2023, he received the Mustafa Prize for his contributions to software engineering.^[3]

Education

Hassan completed his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Waterloo in 2005.^[4]

Research interests

Ahmed Hassan's research focuses on the intersection of systems and software engineering. His work supports software professionals in developing, maintaining, and evolving complex, large-scale software systems.

Notable contributions

Ahmed Hassan has made significant contributions to the field of software engineering:

• Mining Software Repositories (MSR): Hassan has been influential in pioneering MSR by establishing methods for extracting insights from software development data. His paper "The Road Ahead for Mining Software Repositories" is a foundational work that outlines challenges and opportunities in MSR research.^[5]

• Fault Prediction through Code Complexity: In his work "Predicting Faults Using the Complexity of Code Changes," Hassan demonstrated how the analysis of code change complexity can be used to predict software faults, significantly contributing to software quality assurance practices.^[6]

• FMWare: Hassan introduced the concept of "FMWare," which proposes software frameworks that integrate with foundational models to ensure performance and reliability. This approach addresses challenges in developing trustworthy AI-driven software.^[7]

Awards and recognition

Ahmed Hassan's career includes several notable accolades:

• 2023: Mustafa Prize, Mustafa Prize Foundation (Recognized for his contributions to software engineering.)^[3]

• 2019: Fellow of ACM and IEEE: Honored for his contributions to computing and software engineering.^[8][9][2]

• 2017: World's Most Prolific Software Engineer in the Past Decade, Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software^[10]

Selected publications

• Ahmed E. Hassan "Predicting faults using the complexity of code changes" (2009)^[11]
• Yasutaka Kamei, Emad Shihab, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan, Audris Mockus, Anand Sinha, Naomi Ubayashi "A Large-Scale Empirical Study of Just-in-Time Quality Assurance" (2012)^[12]
• Tarek M. Ahmed, Cor-Paul Bezemer, Tse-Hsun Chen, Ahmed E. Hassan, Weiyi Shang "Studying the Effectiveness of Application Performance Management (APM) Tools for Detecting Performance Regressions for Web Applications: An Experience Report" (2016)^[13]