Mojtaba Shahin

Mojtaba Shahin

I am a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to a U.S. Associate Professor) at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Prospective Students

I am always keen to work with highly motivated students. If you are interested, please email me and briefly outline your research interests. Below are several potential research themes to consider; these are indicative rather than exhaustive.

Having 1–2 papers in top-tier Computer Science and Software Engineering conferences will increase your chances!

The projects mainly target Software Engineering for AI (SE4AI) and AI for Software Engineering (AI4SE).

Research Theme 1. Human-Centred AI-based Software Systems Engineering

AI-based software systems (software system that incorporates AI capabilities) are becoming an important and integrated part of our lives and society. From a software engineering perspective, AI-based software systems differ from non-AI systems and possess unique characteristics. This implies that new and/or revised software engineering practices and tools are needed to develop such systems. At the same time, there is an urgent need to ensure that AI-based software systems do not violate the ethical and social concerns of their various stakeholders and end-users. This research theme aims to (i) develop novel tools, processes, practices, and guidelines to engineering human-centred AI-based software systems, (ii) carry out social and ethical assessments of AI-based software systems, and (iii) propose concrete solutions to identify and mitigate social and ethical concerns in AI-based software systems.

Research Theme 2. AI/LLMs/Data Science for Software Engineering

AI techniques, particularly LLMs (Large Language Models), have shown promising applications in different software engineering tasks. This research theme will focus on how LLMs can be used to (i) improve software engineering and design tasks, (ii) build better software engineering and design tools, and (iii) identify actionable information, particularly human-centred information, from large-scale historical software engineering data available in software repositories, such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Google Play Store.

Research Theme 3. Socio-Technical Cyber Security

Although there is much research that has focused on the technical aspects of secure software systems, the role of human elements, both developers and end-users, in the context of software security has been less explored. This research direction aims to (i) uncover how software designers make and evaluate security design decisions, (ii) develop innovative methods and patterns to detect and fix security vulnerabilities and security smells at the design level, and (iii) deepen knowledge of the behaviour and awareness of end-users in the context of cybersecurity.