Dr. Sebastiano Panichella

ZHAW School of Engineering
Forschungsschwerpunkt Software Engineering
Obere Kirchgasse 2 / Steinberggasse 12/14
8400 Winterthur

+41 (0) 58 934 41 56
sebastiano.panichella@zhaw.ch

Projects

AERIALIST / Project leader / Project ongoing
Exploiting User Journeys and Testing Automation for Supporting Efficient Energy Service Platforms / Project leader / Project completed
COSMOS – DevOps for Complex Cyber-physical Systems of Systems / Project leader / Project completed
Smart City Simulation Platform / Team member / Project completed
MOSAIC – Monitored Platform for Container Based Applications / Team member / Project completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

Birchler, Christian; Khatiri, Sajad; Bosshard, Bill; Gambi, Alessio; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2023.

Machine learning-based test selection for simulation-based testing of self-driving cars software.

Empirical Software Engineering.

28(71).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10286-y
Rani, Pooja; Blasi, Arianna; Stulova, Nataliia; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gorla, Alessandra; Nierstrasz, Oscar,

2023.

A decade of code comment quality assessment : a systematic literature review.

Journal of Systems and Software.

195(111515).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2022.111515
Birchler, Christian; Ganz, Nicolas; Khatiri, Sajad; Gambi, Alessio; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2023.

Cost-effective simulation-based test selection in self-driving cars software.

Science of Computer Programming.

226(102926).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2023.102926
Zampetti, Fiorella; Kapur, Ritu; Di Penta, Massimiliano; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

An empirical characterization of software bugs in open-source Cyber–Physical Systems.

Journal of Systems and Software.

192(111425).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2022.111425
Di Sorbo, Andrea; Zampetti, Fiorella; Visaggio, Corrado A.; Di Penta, Massimiliano; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

Automated identification and qualitative characterization of safety concerns reported in UAV software platforms.

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.

32(3), pp. 67.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3564821
Zampetti, Fiorella; Tamburri, Damian A.; Panichella, Sebastiano; Panichella, Annibale; Canfora, Gerardo; Penta, Massimiliano Di,

2022.

Continuous integration and delivery practices for cyber-physical systems : an interview-based study.

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.

32(3), pp. 73.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3571854
Devroey, Xavier; Gambi, Alessio; Galeotti, Juan Pablo; Just, René; Kifetew, Fitsum; Panichella, Annibale; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

JUGE : an infrastructure for benchmarking Java unit test generators.

Software Testing, Verification and Reliability.

33(3), pp. e1838.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/stvr.1838
Birchler, Christian; Khatiri, Sajad; Derakhshanfar, Pouria; Panichella, Sebastiano; Panichella, Annibale,

2022.

Single and multi-objective test cases prioritization for self-driving cars in virtual environments.

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.

37(4), pp. 111.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3533818
Panichella, Annibale; Panichella, Sebastiano; Fraser, Gordon; Sawant, Anand; Hellendoorn, Vincent,

2022.

Test smells 20 years later : detectability, validity, and reliability.

Empirical Software Engineering.

27(7), pp. 170.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10207-5
Rani, Pooja; Panichella, Sebastiano; Leuenberger, Manuel; Di Sorbo, Andrea; Nierstrasz, Oscar,

2021.

How to identify class comment types? : a multi-language approach for class comment classification.

Journal of Systems and Software.

181(111047).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2021.111047
Zampetti, Fiorella; Mudbhari, Saghan; Arnaoudova, Venera; Di Penta, Massimiliano; Panichella, Sebastiano; Antoniol, Giuliano,

2021.

Using code reviews to automatically configure static analysis tools.

Empirical Software Engineering.

27(1), pp. 28.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10076-4
Rani, Pooja; Panichella, Sebastiano; Leuenberger, Manuel; Ghafari, Mohammad; Nierstrasz, Oscar,

2021.

What do class comments tell us? : an investigation of comment evolution and practices in Pharo Smalltalk.

Empirical Software Engineering.

26(6), pp. 112.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-09981-5
Panichella, Sebastiano; Canfora, Gerardo; Di Sorbo, Andrea,

2021.

“Won’t we fix this issue?” : qualitative characterization and automated identification of wontfix issues on GitHub.

Information and Software Technology.

139(106665).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106665
Di Sorbo, Andrea; Grano, Giovanni; Visaggio, Corrado Aaron; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2020.

Investigating the criticality of user‐reported issues through their relations with app rating.

Journal of Software: Evolution and Process.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2316
Panichella, Sebastiano; Zaugg, Nik,

2020.

An empirical investigation of relevant changes and automation needs in modern code review.

Empirical Software Engineering.

25(6), pp. 4833-4872.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09870-3
Zampetti, Fiorella; Vassallo, Carmine; Panichella, Sebastiano; Canfora, Gerardo; Gall, Harald; Di Penta, Massimiliano,

2020.

An empirical characterization of bad practices in continuous integration.

Empirical Software Engineering.

2020(25), pp. 1095-1135.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09785-8
Vassallo, Carmine; Panichella, Sebastiano; Palomba, Fabio; Proksch, Sebastian; Gall, Harald C.; Zaidman, Andy,

2020.

How developers engage with static analysis tools in different contexts.

Empirical Software Engineering.

2020(25), pp. 1419-1457.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09750-5
Kallis, Rafael; Di Sorbo, Andrea; Canfora, Gerardo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2020.

Predicting issue types on GitHub.

Science of Computer Programming.

205(102598).

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2020.102598
Lenarduzzi, Valentina; Daly, Jeremy; Martini, Antonio; Panichella, Sebastiano; Tamburri, Damian Andrew,

2020.

Toward a technical debt conceptualization for serverless computing.

IEEE Software.

38(1), pp. 40-47.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2020.3030786
Zhou, Yu; Su, Yanqi; Chen, Taolue; Huang, Zhiqiu; Gall, Harald C.; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2020.

User review-based change file localization for mobile applications.

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

47(12), pp. 2755-2770.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.2967383
Grano, Giovanni; Titov, Timofey V.; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gall, Harald C.,

2019.

Branch coverage prediction in automated testing.

Journal of Software: Evolution and Process.

31(9), pp. e2158.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2158
Di Sorbo, Andrea; Panichella, Sebastiano; Visaggio, Corrado Aaron; Di Penta, Massimiliano; Canfora, Gerardo; Gall, Harald C.,

2019.

Exploiting natural language structures in software informal documentation.

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2930519
Panichella, Sebastiano; Palomba, Fabio; Lorenz, David; Nagappan, Meiyappan,

2019.

Guest editorial : special issue on software engineering for mobile applications.

Empirical Software Engineering.

24(6), pp. 3249-3254.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09776-9
Panichella, Sebastiano; Guzman, Emitza; Pasquale, Liliana; Seyff, Norbert; Di Sorbo, Andrea,

2019.

Guest editors introduction : special issue on user feedback and software quality in the mobile domain.

Information and Software Technology.

112, pp. 176-177.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.05.005
Grano, Giovanni; Laaber, Christoph; Panichella, Annibale; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2019.

Testing with fewer resources : an adaptive approach to performance-aware test case generation.

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2946773
Zhou, Yu; Yan, Xin; Chen, Taolue; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gall, Harald,

2018.

Automatic detection and repair recommendation of directive defects in Java API documentation.

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

46(9), pp. 1004-1023.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2872971

Conference contributions, peer-reviewed

Blattner, Timo; Birchler, Christian; Kehrer, Timo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2024.

Diversity-guided search exploration for self-driving cars test generation through Frenet space encoding [paper].

In:

2024 ACM/IEEE International Workshop on Search-Based and Fuzz Testing (SBFT '24).

17th International Workshop on Search-Based and Fuzz Testing (SBFT), Lisbon, Portugal, 14-20 April 2024.

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-30165
Birchler, Christian; Kombarabettu Mohammed, Tanzil; Rani, Pooja; Nechita, Teodora; Kehrer, Timo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2024.

How does simulation-based testing for self-driving cars match human perception? [paper].

In:

ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, 17-19 July 2024.

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-30166
Khatiri, Sajad; Saurabh, Prasun; Zimmermann, Timothy; Munasinghe, Charith; Birchler, Christian; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2024.

SBFT tool competition 2024 : CPS-UAV test case generation track [paper].

In:

17th International Workshop on Search-Based and Fuzz Testing (SBFT), Lisbon, Portugal, 14-20 April 2024.

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-30115
Birchler, Christian; Rohrbach, Cyrill; Kehrer, Timo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2024.

SensoDat : simulation-based sensor dataset of self-driving cars [paper].

In:

21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), Lisbon, Portugal, 15-16 April 2024.

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-30117
Khatiri, Sajad; Panichella, Sebastiano; Tonella, Paolo,

2024.

Simulation-based testing of unmanned aerial vehicles with Aerialist [paper].

In:

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

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-29678
Khatiri, Sajad; Panichella, Sebastiano; Tonella, Paolo,

2023.

Simulation-based test case generation for unmanned aerial vehicles in the neighborhood of real flights [paper].

In:

16th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), Dublin, Ireland, 16-20 April 2023.

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-26597
Birchler, Christian; Rohrbach, Cyrill; Kim, Hyeongkyun; Gambi, Alessio; Liu, Tianhai; Horneber, Jens; Kehrer, Timo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2023.

TEASER : simulation-based CAN bus regression testing for self-driving cars software [paper].

In:

2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE).

38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Kirchberg, Luxembourg, 11-15 September 2023.

IEEE.

pp. 2058-2061.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00154
Birchler, Christian; Ganz, Nicolas; Khatiri, Sajad; Gambi, Alessio; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

Cost-effective simulation-based test selection in self-driving cars software with SDC-Scissor [paper].

In:

2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER).

29th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering, Honolulu, USA (online), 15-18 March 2022.

IEEE.

pp. 164-168.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00030
Kallis, Rafael; Chaparro, Oscar; Di Sorbo, Andrea; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

NLBSE’22 tool competition [paper].

In:

2022 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on Natural Language-Based Software Engineering (NLBSE).

1st International Workshop on Natural Language-Based Software Engineering (NLBSE), Pittsburgh, USA (online), 8 May 2022.

IEEE.

pp. 25-28.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3528588.3528664
Di Sorbo, Andrea; Visaggio, Corrado A.; Di Penta, Massimiliano; Canfora, Gerardo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2021.

An NLP-based tool for software artifacts analysis [paper].

In:

37th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), Luxembourg, 27 September - 1 October 2021.

Winterthur:

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-23363
Ashraf, Usman; Mayr-Dorn, Christoph; Mashkoor, Atif; Egyed, Alexander; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2021.

Do communities in developer interaction networks align with subsystem developer teams? : an empirical study of open source systems [paper].

In:

2021 IEEE/ACM Joint 15th International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP) and 16th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE).

Joint 15th International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP) and 16th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), Madrid, Spain, 17-19 May 2021.

IEEE.

pp. 61-71.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSSP-ICGSE52873.2021.00016
Panichella, Sebastiano; Gambi, Alessio; Zampetti, Fiorella; Riccio, Vincenzo,

2021.

SBST tool competition 2021 [paper].

In:

2021 IEEE/ACM 14th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST).

14th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST), Madrid, Spain, 31 May 2021.

IEEE.

pp. 20-27.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/SBST52555.2021.00011
Panichella, Sebastiano; Rahman, Mohammad; Taibi, Davide,

2021.

Structural coupling for microservices [paper].

In:

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science.

11th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER), online, 28-30 April 2021.

SciTePress.

pp. 280-287.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.5220/0010481902800287
Rani, Pooja; Birrer, Mathias; Panichella, Sebastiano; Ghafari, Mohammad; Nierstrasz, Oscar,

2021.

What do developers discuss about code comments? [paper].

In:

21st IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM), online, 27-28 September 2021.

Winterthur:

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-23362
Zhou, Yu; Yan, Xin; Chen, Taolue; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gall, Harald,

2019.

DRONE : a tool to detect and repair directive defects in Java APIs documentation [paper].

In:

2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion).

International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2019), Montreal, Canada, 25-31 May 2019.

IEEE.

pp. 115-118.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-Companion.2019.00052
Martin, Diego; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2019.

The cloudification perspectives of search-based software testing [paper].

In:

2019 IEEE/ACM 12th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST).

12th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST), Montreal, Canada, 26-27 May 2019.

IEEE.

pp. 5-6.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/SBST.2019.00009
Kallis, Rafael; Di Sorbo, Andrea; Canfora, Gerardo; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2019.

Ticket tagger : machine learning driven issue classification [paper].

In:

2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME).

2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), Cleveland, OH, USA, 29 Sept.-4 Oct. 2019.

IEEE.

pp. 406-409.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00070
Alexandru, Carol V.; Merchante, José J.; Panichella, Sebastiano; Proksch, Sebastian; Gall, Harald C.; Robles, Gregorio,

2018.

On the usage of pythonic idioms [paper].

In:

Onward! 2018 : Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software.

Onward! 2018, Boston, USA, 4-9 November 2018.

New York:

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 1-11.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3276954.3276960

Other publications

Guizzo, Giovani; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2023.

Fuzzing vs SBST : intersections & differences [paper].

In:

15th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST), Pittsburgh, USA, 9 May 2022.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 105-107.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3573074.3573102
Di Sorbo, Andrea; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2023.

Summary of the 1st Natural Language-based Software Engineering Workshop (NLBSE 2022) [paper].

In:

1st International Workshop on Natural Language-Based Software Engineering (NLBSE), Pittsburgh, USA (online), 8 May 2022.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 101-104.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3573074.3573101
Panichella, Sebastiano; Di Sorbo, Andrea,

2023.

Summary of the 2nd Natural Language-based Software Engineering Workshop (NLBSE 2023) [paper].

In:

2nd International Workshop on Natural Language-Based Software Engineering (NLBSE), Melbourne, Australia, 20 May 2023.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 60-63.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3617946.3617957
Birchler, Christian; Khatiri, Sajad; Bosshard, Bill; Gambi, Alessio; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2022.

Machine learning-based test selection for simulation-based testing of self-driving cars software.

arXiv.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.04769
Ashraf, Usman; Mayr-Dorn, Christoph; Egyed, Alexander; Panichella, Sebastiano,

2020.

A mixed graph-relational dataset of socio-technical interactions in open source systems [paper].

In:

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories.

MSR '20: 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, Seoul, South Korea, June 2020.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 538-542.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3379597.3387492
Azeem, Muhammad Ilyas; Panichella, Sebastiano; Di Sorbo, Andrea; Serebrenik, Alexander; Wang, Qing,

2020.

Action-based recommendation in pull-request development [paper].

In:

Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and System Processes.

ICSSP '20: International Conference on Software and System Processes, Seoul, South Korea, June 2020.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 115-124.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3379177.3388904
Roy, Devjeet; Zhang, Ziyi; Ma, Maggie; Arnaoudova, Venera; Panichella, Annibale; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gonzalez, Danielle; Mirakhorli, Mehdi,

2020.

DeepTC-Enhancer : improving the readability of automatically generated tests [paper].

In:

Proceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering.

35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Virtual Event, 21-25 September 2020.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 287-298.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3324884.3416622
Devroey, Xavier; Panichella, Sebastiano; Gambi, Alessio,

2020.

Java unit testing tool competition [paper].

In:

ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops.

ICSEW '20: 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering, Seoul, South Korea, June 2020.

Association for Computing Machinery.

pp. 545-548.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3387940.3392265
Panichella, Sebastiano; Ruiz, Marcela,

2020.

Requirements-collector : automating requirements specification from elicitation sessions and user feedback [paper].

In:

2020 IEEE 28th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE).

28th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2020), Zurich, Switzerland, 31 August - 4 September 2020.

IEEE.

pp. 404-407.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/RE48521.2020.00057
Panichella, Annibale; Panichella, Sebastiano; Fraser, Gordon; Sawant, Anand Ashok; Hellendoorn, Vincent J.,

2020.

Revisiting test smells in automatically generated tests : limitations, pitfalls, and opportunities [paper].

In:

2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME).

International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM), Adelaide, Australia, 28 September - 2 October 2020.

IEEE.

pp. 523-533.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00056
Spillner, Josef, ed.,

2018.

Service Prototyping Lab Report - 2018 (Y3).

Winterthur:

ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-3945

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