About Me
I am a permanent full-time lecturer and researcher at the University of Mondragon. My research interests include software engineering and software testing areas, mostly related to the application of these to complex software systems, like Cyber-Physical Systems, AI-based systems and Generative AI models. In the last few years, my research has centered on the test oracle problem for this context and test optimization techniques. My research is industry-oriented. I collaborate with different industrial companies to better understand which their real problems are and try not only to devise novel approaches, but ensure its applicability and scalability.
Open PhD Student Position
I am looking for multiple self-motivated PhD students to work in two different projects:
InnoGuard MSCA project, 3 year, 3 PhD positions
ATRACT project, 4 year PhD position
Students and Postdoc Supervision
Current supervision:
Graduated Students:
- Jon Ayerdi (PhD student), Graduated December 2022. Excelent Cum Laude.
Previous students and post-doc supervision:
- Sehrish Malik (External post-doctoral fellow), 2023
- Ernest Pobee (Postdoctoral fellow), 2021-2022
- Eñaut Mendiluze (Master Student), since 2021-2023
- Pablo Valle (Research Assistant), 2019-2022
- Jorge da Silva (Research Assitant), 2021
- Eñaut Mendiluze (Bachelor degree project), 2020-2021, in Simula Research Laboratory
- Joritz Galarraga (Bachelor degree project), 2020-2021, in Simula Research Laboratory
- Ander Zubizarreta (Bachelor degree project), 2021
News
- I have joined the PC of the two premier software testing conferences, ISSTA 2025 and ICST 2025! Looking forward to reviewing interesting papers!
- We got a new Marie-Curie Doctoral Training project funded, named InnoGuard, which aims at applying Generative AI techniques to ensure high quality for Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems!
- For another year, I have joined the PC of ISSRE 2024 and SSBSE 2024 conferences!
- I have joined the editorial board of Science of Computer Programming and Information and Science Technology! Very happy to learn this new roles!
- Our paper “A Novel Mutation Operator for Search-Based Test Case Selection” received the best paper award at the 15th International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering! Very honored to receive this award!
- I have joined the Program Committee of the special event of AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering (FORGE 2024), co-located with ICSE 2024!
- New project accepted! Titled as “TRUST4AI: Trustable AI-Driven Internet Search”, it will explore techniques to automatically test Large Language Models! The project will be co-led with Prof. Sergio Segura
Oportunities
Looking for a PhD, Postdoc or other collaboration? Have a look at the opportunities!
Papers
Check my recent papers!
Awards
- 2024 – Distinguished Reviewer Award at the 17th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation
(ICST 2024)
- 2024 – Distinguished Reviewer Award at the first special event of AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering (FORGE 2024)
- 2023 – Distinguished reviewer at IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- 2023 – Best Paper Award at the 15th International Symposium on Search-based Software Engineering SSBSE 2023 at the
- 2022 – Distinguished Reviewer Award at the 33rd IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)
- 2020 – GECCO Best paper at the Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) Track. Nominee to conference best paper award.
- 2019 – Best PhD dissertation presented in 2017 in Software Engineering, awarded by the SISTEDES society.
- 2019 – Early-stage researcher for his research in the field of software development and testing of industrial applications, awarded by SCIE and Fundación BBVA.
Service
Conferences
I have served at different conferences, with different roles. These are some examples:
- PC Member, ISSTA 2025
- PC Member, ICST 2025
- PC Member, ASE 2024 NIER Track
- Artifact Evaluation Track Chair, ISSRE 2024
- Program Chair, MET 2024
- Program Chair, AIST 2024
- PC Member, SSBSE 2024
- PC Member, ISSRE 2024
- PC Member, FORGE 2024
- PC Member, SANER 2024 Short Papers and Posters Track
- PC Member, ICST 2024
- PC Member, ICSE 2024 Software Engineering in Practice track
- PC Member, ICSE 2024 Demonstration track
- PC Member, SSBSE 2023
- PC Member, ISSRE 2023
- PC Member, ASE 2023
- PC Member, ASE 2023 Industry Showcase track
- Track Chair at QUATIC 2022. Track “Quality Aspects in Digital Twins and Cyber-physical Systems”
- PC Member, ISSRE 2022 research track. Distinguished Reviewer Award.
- PC Member, ASE 2022 NIER track
Journals
I am part of the Editorial Board of the following journals:
I am part of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) Distinguished Reviewers Board
I have reviewed for different journals, including:
- IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology
- Empirical Software Engineering
- Information and Software Technology
- Journal of Systems and Software
- IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
- Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability
- Software and Systems Modeling
- Journal of Object Technology
Projects
European Projects
Starting in 2024, I will lead the project InnoGuard – InnoGuard: Hybrid and Generative Intelligence for Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems
Starting in 2024, I will lead the project TRUST4AI, Trustable AI-Driven Internet Search!
From 2020 to 2023 March, I coordinated the Adeptness project. If you are interested in the outcomes of this project or you would like to be somehow involved, please contact me!
Industrial Projects
I currently collaborate in private-funding projects with the following companies:
Past Projects
Previously, I worked in different research projects, including:
- Adeptness - H2020 project (Principal Investigator)
- HIFI-ELEMENTS - H2020 Project
- TESTOMAT - ITEA 3 Project
- SCRATCH - ITEA 3 Project
- TESEO - Basque Government funded project
- DIGITAL - Basque Government funded project
- PING - Regional project
I have also worked with other industrial private-funding projects with the following companies:
- Mathworks
- Ulma Handling Systems
- Ulma Embedded Solutions
Lecturing
- I will be teaching a new course in 2023, named as “Programming Cyber-Physical Systems”.
- During 2021-2022 course, I teach “Software Engineering”, at bachelor degree level.
- I also teach yearly a seminar on “Methodological guidelines for the preparation of a doctoral dissertation”, at doctoral level.
- Since 2018 to 2020, and from 2022 on I have been the lecturer of “Industrial Informatics” (4.5 ECTS), at bachelor degree level.
- At master level, I taughted the course “Verification and Validation of Embedded Systems” (6 ECTS), in 2018 and 2019
- I also taughted other subjects (e.g., Basic Programming) at different engineering degrees (Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, etc.)