Westley Weimer

4636 Beyster Building

Office Phone: 734-615-9916

Teaching and Advising

This semester I am teaching EECS 590 — Advanced Programming Languages.

I help organize our annual Climate, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report as well as CSE Town Halls.

I help maintain the Computer Science Graduate Job and Interview Guide which explains the CS job search process for graduate students (e.g., teaching and research statements, interviews, offers, negotations, academia and industry) and provides evidence from multiple experiences with it.

Research Projects

My current main research interests relate to consciousness, time, and advancing software quality by using both static and dynamic programming language approaches. On the purely-CS side, I am particularly concerned with automatic or minimally-guided techniques that can scale and be applied easily to large, existing programs. I believe that finding bugs is insufficient, and I also work to help programmers address defects, understand programs, and program correctly.

Current major research interests and areas:

Medical Imaging, Consciousness and Time. I believe consciousness to be primal, relevant, inadequately explained, and amenable to experimentation: to me, it is the most interesting of the big problems. I believe the experience of consciousness over time to be a hard problem (in a sense akin to NP-Hard) in that solving it would allow us to solve most other problems. While these are not typically research problems considered in computer science, I believe they are becoming approachable through modern medical imaging and interested prospective students are encouraged to compare my thoughts on the subject to their own.
• Indicative Paper: Decoding the representation of code in the brain: An fMRI study of code review and expertise (distinguished paper award, ICSE 2017)
• Project and Dataset Webpage

Automated Program Repair. We have pioneered algorithms, such as GenProg, to synthesize repairs for defects in legacy programs using only standard testcases (no code annotations or formal specifications). We use special program representations and modification operators to search through the space of candidate patches until one is found that passes all of the testcases but does not demonstrate the error.
• Indicative Paper: GenProg: A Generic Method for Automated Software Repair (featured article award, IEEE TSE 2012)
• Project and Dataset Webpage
• Autonomous Vehicles Sub-Project, see high-level one-minute video

Program Analysis and Transformation. I enjoy designing, and applying, algorithms that analyze the semantics, behavior and maintainability of software. I particularly appreciate program analysis because it benefits from both formal, logical proofs as well human studies and natural language.
• Indicative Paper: Using Dynamic Analysis to Discover Polynomial and Array Invariants (distinguished paper award, ICSE 2012)

Improving Software Properties. Beyond functional correctness, a number of other properties are important to software. Aspects as diverse as power consumption, maintainability, and visual fidelity are all important in some domains. We have developed techniques to improve or trade-off these non-functional properties in software automatically.
• Indicative Paper: Modeling Readability to Improve Unit Tests (distinguished paper award, FSE 2015)

Publications

• Joseph Renzullo, Pemma Reiter, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Automated Program Repair: Emerging Trends Pose and Expose Problems for Benchmarks: ACM Computing Surveys, Volume 57, Issue 8 Article No.: 208, Pages 1 - 18, 10.1145/3704997
• Claire Le Goues, ThanhVu Nguyen, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: The Evolution of Automated Software Repair: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering 2025 10.1109/TSE.2025.3533309


• Danniell Hu, Priscila Santiesteban, Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer: Towards a Cognitive Model of Dynamic Debugging: Does Identifier Construction Matter?: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering 2024 10.1109/TSE.2024.3465222 [ 15min presentation video | slides | repository | dataset ]
• Pemma Reiter, Hui Jun Tay, Westley Weimer, Adam Doupe, Ruoyu "Fish" Wang, Stephanie Forrest: Automatically Mitigating Vulnerabilities in Binary Programs via Partially Recompilable Decompilation: Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 10.1109/TDSC.2024.3482413"
• Cole Mathis, Devansh Patel, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Self-organization in computation and chemistry: Return to AlChemy: Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science Vol. 34, Issue 9, 2024 10.1063/5.0207358
• Anda Liang, Emerson Murphy-Hill, Westley Weimer, Yu Huang: A Controlled Experiment in Age and Gender Bias When Reading Technical Articles in Software Engineering: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering 2024 10.1109/TSE.2024.3437355
• Joseph Renzullo, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Combining Online Learning with Mutation-Based Stochastic Search to Repair Buggy Programs. GECCO Companion 2024: 53-54 10.1145/3638530.3664082
• Michael Sandborn, Zachary Stoebner, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest, Ryan Dougherty, Jules White, Kevin Leach: Reducing Malware Analysis Overhead with Coverings: Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) 2024
• Westley Weimer: Post-Ph.D. Career Advice: Risk, Communication, and You: International Conference on Software Engineering — Doctoral Symposium (ICSE-DS): Keynote (2024)
• Wenxin He, Manasvi Parikh, Westley Weimer, Madeline Endres: High Expectations: An Observational Study of Programming and Cannabis Intoxication: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2024 [ slides ]
• Hammad Ahmad, Madeline Endres, Kaia Newman, Priscila Santiesteban, Emma Shedden, Westley Weimer: Causal Relationships and Programming Outcomes: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Experiment: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2024 (distinguished paper award) [ slides ]
• Zihan Fang, Madeline Endres, Thomas Zimmermann, Denae Ford, Westley Weimer, Kevin Leach, Yu Huang: A Four-Year Study of Student Contributions to OSS vs. OSS4SG with a Lightweight Intervention: Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) 2023 (distinguished paper award)
• Madeline Endres, André Brechmann, Bonita Sharif, Westley Weimer, Janet Siegmund: Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22402): Dagtuhl Reports 12(10): 2192-5283 (2023) [ doi ]
• Priscila Santiesteban, Yu Huang, Westley Weimer, Hammad Ahmad: CirFix: Automated Hardware Repair and its Real-World Applications: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) TSE-2022-08-0353
• Kaia Newman, Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer, Brittany Johnson: From Organizations to Individuals: Psychoactive Substance Use By Professional Programmers: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2023
• Hammad Ahmad, Zachary Karas, Kimberly Diaz, Amir Kamil, Jean-Baptiste Jeannin, Westley Weimer: How Do We Read Formal Claims? Eye-Tracking and the Cognition of Proofs about Algorithms: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2023
• Hammad Ahmad, Colton Holoday, Ian Bertram, Kevin Angstadt, Zohreh Sharafi, Westley Weimer: LOGI: An Empirical Model of Heat-Induced Disk Drive Data Loss and its Implications for Data Recovery: Predictive Models and Data Analytics in Software Engineering (PROMISE) 2022 [ dataset ]
• Kevin Leach, Christopher S. Timperley, Kevin Angstadt, Anh Nguyen-Tuong, Jason Hiser, Aaron Paulos, Partha Pal, Patrick Hurley, Carl Thomas, Jack W. Davidson, Stephanie Forrest, Claire Le Goues, Westley Weimer: START: A Framework for Trusted and Resilient Autonomous Vehicles: International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 2022
• Westley Weimer: From Deep Learning to Human Judgments: Lessons for Genetic Improvement: Genetic Improvement (GI): Keynote (2022) [ Video (191 MB) ]
• Georgios Sakkas, Madeline Endres, Philip J. Guo, Westley Weimer, Ranjit Jhala: Seq2Parse: Neurosymbolic Parse Error Repair: Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) 2022 [ dataset | archive ]
• Hammad Ahmad, Padraic Cashin, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Digging into Semantics: Where do search-based software repair methods search?: International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN) 2022
• Kevin Angstadt, Tom Tracy, Kevin Skadron, Jean-Baptiste Jeannin, Westley Weimer: Synthesizing Legacy String Code for FPGAs Using Bounded Automata Learning: IEEE Micro 2022
• Pemma Reiter, Antonio M. Espnoza, Ruoyu "Fish" Wang, Adam Doupe, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Improving Source-Code Representations to Enhance Search-based Software Repair: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) (2022) [ code | archive ]
• Westley Weimer, Yu Huang: Verbal Data in Software Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities: Workshop on Advances in Human-Centric Experiments in Software Engineering (HUMAN) (2022): keynote address
• Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer and Amir Kamil: Making a Gamble: Recruiting SE Participants on a Budget: Workshop on Recruiting Participants for Empirical Software Engineering (RoPES) (2022) [ dataset | archive ]
• Madeline Endres, Pemma Reiter, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: What Can Program Repair Learn From Code Review?: Workshop on Automated Program Repair (APR) (2022) [ dataset | archive ]
• Priscila Santiesteban, Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer: An Analysis of Sex Differences in Computing Teaching Evaluations: Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering (GE) (2022) [ dataset | archive | video ]
• Annie Li, Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer: Debugging with Stack Overflow: Web Search Behavior in Novice and Expert Programmers: International Conference on Software Engineering — Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) (2022) [ dataset | archive | video ]
• Hammad Ahmad, Yu Huang, Westley Weimer: CirFix: Automatically Repairing Defects in Hardware Design Code: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) (2022) [ slides | artifact badge: available, functional, reproduced | archive ]
• Madeline Endres, Kevin Boehnke, Westley Weimer: Hashing It Out: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (2022) [ dataset | archive | video ]
• Lei Zhou, Fengwei Zhang, Jidong Xiao, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer, Xuhua Ding, Guojun Wang: A Coprocessor-Based Introspection Framework Via Intel Management Engine: IEEE Trans. on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 1920-1932, 1 July-Aug. 2021.
• Madeline Endres, Madison Fansher, Priti Shah, Westley Weimer: To Read or To Rotate? Comparing the Effects of Technical Reading Training and Spatial Skills Training on Novice Programming Ability: Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE): 2021 [ Project and Dataset Webpage | (local copy) ]
• Zachary Karas, Andrew Jahn, Westley Weimer, Yu Huang: Connecting the Dots: Rethinking the Relationship between Code and Prose Writing with Functional Connectivity: Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE): 2021
• Fee Christoph, Westley Weimer, Kevin Angstadt: The Early Bird Gets the Worm: Major Retention in CS3: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE): 2021 [ slides ]
• Yu Huang, Hammad Ahmad, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Applying Automated Program Repair to Dataflow Programming Languages: Genetic Improvement (GI): (2021) [ video ]
• Joseph Renzullo, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Multiplicative Weights Algorithms for Parallel Automated Software Repair: International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS): (2021)
• Madeline Endres, Zachary Karas, Xiaosu Hu, Ioulia Kovelman, Westley Weimer: Relating Reading, Visualization, and Coding for New Programmers: A Neuroimaging Study: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): (2021) [ 10min presentation video | 2min news video | dataset | archive ]
• Zohreh Sharafi, Yu Huang, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer: Toward an objective measure of developers' cognitive activities: ACM Trans. on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM): Volume 30, Issue 3, pages 1-40 (2021)
• Zohreh Sharafi, Ian Bertram, Michael Flanagan, Westley Weimer: Eyes on Code: A Study on Developers' Code Navigation Strategies: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE): 10.1109/TSE.2020.3032064 (2021)
• Madeline Endres, Westley Weimer, Amir Kamil: An Analysis of Iterative and Recursive Problem Performance: Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium: (2021) [ video (245 MB) ]
• Ian Bertram, Jack Hong, Yu Huang, Westley Weimer, Zohreh Sharafi: Trustworthiness Perceptions in Code Review: An Eye-tracking Study: Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) Emerging Results and Vision Papers: 2020 [ video (36 MB) | dataset ]
• Yujun Qin, Samuel Gonzalez, Kevin Angstadt, Xiaowei Wang, Stephanie Forrest, Reetuparna Das, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer: MARTINI: Memory Access Traces to Detect Attacks: Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW): 2020
• Yu Huang, Kevin Leach, Zohreh Sharafi, Nicholas McKay, Tyler Santander, Westley Weimer: Biases and Differences in Code Review using Medical Imaging and Eye-Tracking: Genders, Humans, and Machines: Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE): 2020 [ video | slides | Project and Dataset Webpage ]
• Lei Zhou, Fengwei Zhang, Jinghui Liao, Zhenyu Ning, Jidong Xiao, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer, Guojun Wang: KShot: Live Kernel Patching with SMM and SGX: Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN): 2020 (runner-up best paper award)
• Sean Stapleton, Yashmeet Gambhir, Alexander LeClair, Zachary Eberhart, Westley Weimer, Kevin Leach, Yu Huang: A Human Study of Comprehension and Code Summarization: International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC): 2020 [ dataset ]
• Yu Huang, Kevin Angstadt, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer: Selective Symbolic Type-Guided Checkpointing and Restoration for Autonomous Vehicle Repair: Automated Program Repair (APR): 2020
• Georgios Sakkas, Madeline Endres, Benjamin Cosman, Westley Weimer, Ranjit Jhala: Type Error Feedback via Analytic Program Repair: Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) 2020: 16-30
• Ryan Krueger, Yu Huang, Xinyu Liu, Tyler Santander, Westley Weimer, Kevin Leach: Neurological Divide: An fMRI Study of Prose and Code Writing: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): 2020 [ video (55 MB) | slides | artifact | project and dataset ]
• Kevin Angstadt, Jean-Baptiste Jeannin, Westley Weimer: Accelerating Legacy String Kernels via Bounded Automata Learning: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS): 2020 [ video ]
• Benjamin Cosman, Madeline Endres, Georgios Sakkas, Leon Medvinsky, Yao-Yuan Yang, Ranjit Jhala, Kamalika Chaudhuri and Westley Weimer: PABLO: Helping Novices Debug Python Code Through Data-Driven Fault Localization: Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium: 2020
• Madeline Endres, Georgios Sakkas, Benjamin Cosman, Ranjit Jhala, Westley Weimer: InFix: Automatically Repairing Novice Program Inputs: Automated Software Engineering (ASE): 2019 [ slides | GitHub project | dataset ]
• Padraic Cashin, Carianne Martinez, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Understanding Automatically-Generated Patches Through Symbolic Invariant Differences: Automated Software Engineering (ASE) New Ideas Track: 2019 [ slides ]
• Lei Zhou, Jidong Xiao, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer, Fengwei Zhang, Guojun Wang: Nighthawk: Transparent System Introspection from Ring -3: European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS): 2019 [ slides ]
• James Perretta, Westley Weimer, Andrew DeOrio: Human vs. Automated Coding Style Grading in Computing Education: American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE): 2019 [ slides ]
• Westley Weimer, ThanhVu Nguyen, Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest: It Does What You Say, Not What You Mean: Lessons From A Decade of Program Repair: Internatonal Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): Most Influential Paper Keynote (2019) [ slideshare ]
• Westley Weimer: What goes on in your brain when you read and understand code?: International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC): Keynote (2019)
• Kevin Leach, Ryan Dougherty, Chad Spensky, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Evolutionary Computation for Improving Malware Analysis: Genetic Improvement: 2019 (best presentation award) [ slides ]
• Yu Huang, Xinyu Liu, Ryan Krueger, Tyler Santander, Xiaosu Hu, Kevin Leach and Westley Weimer: Distilling Neural Representations of Data Structure Manipulation using fMRI and fNIRS: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): 2019 (distinguished paper award) [ slides | project and dataset ]
• Matthew Casias, Kevin Angstadt, Tommy Tracy II, Kevin Skadron, Westley Weimer: Debugging Support for Pattern-Matching Languages and Accelerators: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS): 2019
• Kevin Angstadt, Jack Wadden, Westley Weimer, and Kevin Skadron: Portable Programming with RAPID: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems: DOI 10.1109/TPDS.2018.2869736, 2018
• Kevin Angstadt, Arun Subramaniyan, Elaheh Sadredini, Reza Rahimi, Kevin Skadron, Westley Weimer, Reetuparna Das: ASPEN: A Scalable In-SRAM Architecture for Pushdown Automata: Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO): 2018 [ slides | lightning talk ]
• Joel Lehman et al.: The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities: arXiv:1803.03453 2018 [ Wired article | New Scientist article | Bloomberg article ]
• Eric Seidel, Ranjit Jhala, Westley Weimer: Dynamic Witnesses for Static Type Errors (or, Ill-Typed Programs Usually Go Wrong): Journal of Functional Programming, Volume 28, 2018
• Joseph Renzullo, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer, Melanie Moses: Neutrality and Epistasis in Program Space: Genetic Improvement: 2018 (best presentation award)
• Kevin Angstadt, Jack Wadden, Vinh Dang, Ted Xie, Westley Weimer, Mircea R. Stan, Kevin Skadron: MNCaRT: An Open-Source, Multi-Architecture Automata-Processing Research and Execution Ecosystem: IEEE Computer Architecture Letters: 1-4 (2017) [ preprint doi: 10.1109/LCA.2017.2780105 ]
• Claire Le Goues, Yuriy Brun, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Clarifications on the Construction and Use of the ManyBugs Benchmark: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) 43(11): 1089-1090 (2017)
• Jonathan Dorn, Jeremy Lacomis, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Automatically Exploring Tradeoffs Between Software Output Fidelity and Energy Costs: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE): 2017
• Kevin Leach, Fengwei Zhang, Westley Weimer: Scotch: Combining Software Guard Extensions and System Management Mode to Monitor Cloud Resource Usage: Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID) 2017: 403-424
• Eric Seidel, Huma Sibghat, Kamalika Chaudhuri, Westley Weimer, Ranjit Jhala: Learning to Blame: Localizing Student Type Errors with Data-Driven Diagnosis: Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) 2017: 60:1 - 60:27
• Justyna Petke, Mark Harman, William Langdon, Westley Weimer: Specialising Software for Different Downstream Applications Using Genetic Improvement and Code Transplantation: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE): 2018, Volume 44, Issue 6
• ThanhVu Nguyen, Deepak Kapur, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Connecting Program Synthesis and Reachability: Automatic Program Repair using Test-Input Generation: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS) 2017: 301-318 [ tech report with full proofs ]
• Benjamin Floyd, Tyler Santander, Westley Weimer: Decoding the representation of code in the brain: An fMRI study of code review and expertise: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2017: 175-186 (distinguished paper award) [ slides | project and dataset ]
• Eric Seidel, Ranjit Jhala, Westley Weimer: Dynamic Witnesses for Static Type Errors (or, ill-typed programs usually go wrong): International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) 2016: 228-242
• Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest, Miryung Kim, Claire Le Goues, Patrick Hurley: Trusted Software Repair for System Resiliency: Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2016) - Industrial Track: 238-241 [ slides ]
• Kate Highnam, Kevin Angstadt, Kevin Leach, Westley Weimer, Aaron Paulos, Patrick Hurley: An Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle Attack Scenario and Trustworthy Repair Architecture: Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2016) - Industrial Track: 222-225 [ slides | project and dataset ]
• Michele Co, Jack W. Davidson, Jason D. Hiser, John C. Knight, Anh Nguuyen-Tuong, Westley Weimer, Jonathan Burket, Gregory L. Frazier, Tiffany M. Frazier, Bruno Dutertre, Ian Mason, Natarajan Shankar, Stephanie Forrest: Double Helix and RAVEN: A System for Cyber Fault Tolerance and Recovery: Cyber and Information Security Research Conference (CISR) 2016: 17:1-17:4 (runner-up best paper award)
• Kevin Leach, Chad Spensky, Westley Weimer, Fengwei Zhang: Towards Transparent Introspection: Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER) 2016: 248-259 [ project code | human study materials ]
• Nicholas Napoli, Kevin Leach, Laura Barnes, Westley Weimer: A MapReduce Framework to Improve Template Matching Uncertainty: Big Data and Smart Computing (BigComp) 2016: 77-84 [ project code, datasets and results ]
• Kevin Angstadt, Westley Weimer, Kevin Skadron: RAPID Programming of Pattern-Recognition Processors: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) 2016: 539-604 [ project code ]
• Jonathan Dorn, Connelly Barnes, Jason Lawrence, Westley Weimer: Towards Automatic Band-Limited Procedural Shaders: Pacific Graphics (PG) 2015: 77-87 [ Slides (17 MB) | Video (160 MB) | Supplemental Results | follow-on genprog-based tool ]
• Ermira Daka, Jose Campos, Gordon Fraser, Jonathan Dorn, Westley Weimer: Modeling Readability to Improve Unit Tests: Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) 2015: 107-118 (distinguished paper award)
• Ermira Daka, Jose Campos, Jonathan Dorn, Gordon Fraser, Westley Weimer: Generating Readable Unit Tests for Guava: Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering (SSBSE) 2015: 235-241
• Claire Le Goues, Neal Holtschulte, Edward K. Smith, Yuriy Brun, Premkumar Devanbu, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: The ManyBugs and IntroClass Benchmarks for Automated Program Repair: IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) 41(12): 1236-1256 (2015)
• Fan Wu, Westley Weimer, Mark Harman, Yue Jia, Jens Krinke: Deep Parameter Optimisation: Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO) 2015: 1375-1382
• Eric Schulte, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Repairing COTS Router Firmware without Access to Source Code or Test Suites: A Case Study in Evolutionary Software Repair. Genetic Improvement Workshop 2015: 847-854 (distinguished paper award)
• Walter Tichy: Automated bug fixing: an interview with Westley Weimer, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia and Martin Monperrus, University of Lille and INRIA, Lille, France. ACM Ubiquity, March 2015, Article 1.
• Adam Brady, Jason Lawrence, Pieter Peers, Westley Weimer: genBRDF: Discovering New analytic BRDFs with Genetic Programming. ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH) 33(4): 114 (2014)
• Matías Martínez, Westley Weimer, Martin Monperrus: Do the Fix Ingredients Already Exist? An Empirical Inquiry into the Redundancy Assumptions of Program Repair Approaches. International Conference on Software Engineering, New Ideas and Emerging Results (ICSE NIER) 2014: 492-495
• Justyna Petke, Mark Harman, William B. Langdon, Westley Weimer: Using Genetic Improvement & Code Transplants to Specialise a C++ Program to a Problem Class. European Conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP) 2014: 137-149 (silver human-competitive award)
• ThanhVu Nguyen, Deepak Kapur, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Using Dynamic Analysis to Generate Disjunctive Invariants. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2014: 608-609
• ThanhVu Nguyen, Stephanie Forrest, Deepak Kapur, Westley Weimer: DIG: A Dynamic Invariant Generator for Polynomial and Array Invariants. ACM Trans. Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 23(4): 30 (2014)
• Eric Schulte, Jonathan Dorn, Stephen Harding, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Post-compiler Software Optimization for Reducing Energy. Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) 2014: 639-652 [ slides ]
• Eric Schulte, Zachary P. Fry, Ethan Fast, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Software Mutational Robustness. Journ. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 15(3): 281-312 (2014)
• Westley Weimer: Advances in Automated Program Repair and a Call To Arms. Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering (SSBSE) 2013: 1-3
• Mark Harman, William B. Langdon, Westley Weimer: Genetic programming for reverse engineering. IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) 2013: 1-10
• Zachary P. Fry, Westley Weimer: Clustering Static Analysis Defect Reports to Reduce Maintenance Costs. IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) 2013: 282-291 [ slides | source code ]
• Westley Weimer, Zachary P. Fry, Stephanie Forrest: Leveraging Program Equivalence for Adaptive Program Repair: Models and First Results. Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2013: 356-366 [ slides ]
• Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Current Challenges in Automatic Software Repair. Software Quality Journal 21(3): 421-443 (2013)
• Eric Schulte, Jonathan DiLorenzo, Stephanie Forrest and Westley Weimer: Automated Repair of Binary and Assembly Programs for Cooperating Embedded Devices. Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) 2013: 317-328
• Zachary P. Fry, Westley Weimer: Leveraging Light-Weight Analyses to Aid Software Maintenance. International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) 2013: 507-508
• Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer: StrSolve: solving string constraints lazily. Autom. Softw. Eng. 19(4): 531-559 (2012)
• Zachary P. Fry, Bryan Landau, Westley Weimer: A Human Study of Patch Maintainability. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2012: 177-187 [ slides | dataset ]
• Claire Le Goues, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Representations and Operators for Improving Evolutionary Software Repair. Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO) 2012: 959-966 (bronze human-competitive award) [ project and datasets ]
• Claire Le Goues, Michael Dewey-Vogt, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: A Systematic Study of Automated Program Repair: Fixing 55 out of 105 bugs for $8 Each. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2012: 3-13 [ project and datasets ]
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: Synthesizing API Usage Examples. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2012: 782-792 [ project code ]
• ThanhVu Nguyen, Deepak Kapur, Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest: Using Dynamic Analysis to Discover Polynomial and Array Invariants. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2012: 683-693 (distinguished paper award) [ project and datasets ]
• Claire Le Goues, ThanhVu Nguyen, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: GenProg: A Generic Method for Automated Software Repair. IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) 38(1): 54-72 (January/February 2012) (featured paper award) [ project and datasets ]
• Claire Le Goues, Westley Weimer: Measuring Code Quality to Improve Specification Mining. IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) 38(1): 175-190 (January/February 2012)
• Pitchaya Sitthi-amorn, Nicholas Modly, Westley Weimer, Jason Lawrence: Genetic Programming for Shader Simplification. ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia) 30(6): 152 (2011) [ Video (82 MB) | Supplemental Results | follow-on genprog-based tool ]
• Kinga Dobolyi, Elizabeth Soechting, Westley Weimer: Automating regression testing using web-based application similarities. Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer 13(2): 111-129 (2011)
• Mauro Pezzè, Martin C. Rinard, Westley Weimer, Andreas Zeller: Self-Repairing Programs (Dagstuhl Seminar 11062). Dagstuhl Reports 1(2): 16-29 (2011) [ doi ]
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Caitlin Sadowski, Westley Weimer: Benefits and Barriers of User Evaluation in Software Engineering Research. Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) 2011: 643-656
• Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: The Case for Software Evolution. Foundations of Software Engineering Working Conference on the Future of Software Engineering (FoSER) 2010: 205-209
• Zachary P. Fry, Westley Weimer: A Human Study of Fault Localization Accuracy. International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM) 2010 [ slides | project | dataset ]
• Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer: Solving String Constraints Lazily. Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2010: 377-386
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: Automatically Documenting Program Changes. Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2010: 33-42 [ project and web demo | command-line tool | (archive) ] (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award)
• Eric Schulte, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Automated Program Repair through the Evolution of Assembly Code. Automated Software Engineering (ASE) Short Paper 2010: 313-316 [ project and datasets ]
• Westley Weimer, Stephanie Forrest, Claire Le Goues, ThanhVu Nguyen: Automatic Program Repair With Evolutionary Computation. Communications of the ACM Vol. 53 No. 5, May 2010, Pages 109-116. [ project and datasets ]
• Kinga Dobolyi, Westley Weimer. Modeling Consumer-Perceived Web Application Fault Severities for Testing. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2010: 97-106 [ dataset ]
• Ethan Fast, Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer: Designing better fitness functions for automated program repair. Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO) 2010: 965-972 [ project and datasets ]
• Kinga Dobolyi, Westley Weimer: Addressing High Severity Faults in Web Application Testing. IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering 2010: 677-075
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: Learning a Metric for Code Readability. IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (TSE) Vol. 36 No. 4, 546-558, July/Aug 2010. [ project | dataset ]
• Kinga Dobolyi, Westley Weimer. Harnessing Web-based Application Similarities to Aid in Regression Testing. International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 2009: 71-80
• Tamim Sookoor, Timothy Hnat, Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer, Kamin Whitehouse: Macrodebugging: Global Views of Distributed Program Execution. Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) 2009: 141-151
• Elizabeth Soechting, Kinga Dobolyi, Westley Weimer. Syntactic Regression Testing for Tree-Structured Output. International Symposium on Web Systems Evolution (WSE) 2009
• Stephanie Forrest, Westley Weimer, ThanhVu Nguyen, Claire Le Goues. A Genetic Programming Approach to Automated Software Repair. Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO) 2009: 947-954 (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award) (best paper award) (gold human-competitive award) [ project and datasets ]
• ThanhVu Nguyen, Westley Weimer, Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest. Using Execution Paths to Evolve Software Patches. Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST) 2009 (best short paper award) (best presentation award) [ project and datasets ]
• Xiang Yin, John Knight, Westley Weimer: Exploiting Refactoring in Formal Verification. International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2009: 53-62
• Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer: A Decision Procedure for Subset Constraints over Regular Languages. Programming Languages Design and Implementation (PLDI) 2009: 188-198 [ project | source code | coq proof ]
• Claire Le Goues, Westley Weimer: Specification Mining With Few False Positives. Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS) 2009: 292-306
• Westley Weimer, ThanVu Nguyen, Claire Le Goues, Stephanie Forrest: Automatically Finding Patches Using Genetic Programming. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2009: 364-374 (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award) (distinguished paper award) (IFIP TC2 Manfred Paul award) [ project and datasets ]
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: The Road Not Taken: Estimating Path Execution Frequency Statically. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2009: 144-154
• Timothy Hnat, Tamim Sookoor, Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer, Kamin Whitehouse: MacroLab: a vector-based macroprogramming framework for cyber-physical systems. Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) 2008: 225-238
• Kinga Dobolyi, Westley Weimer: Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions. International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 2008: 47-56
• Xiang Yin, John Knight, Elizabeth Nguyen, Westley Weimer: Formal Verification By Reverse Synthesis. Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP) 2008: 305-319
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: A Metric for Software Readability. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2008: 121-130 (best paper award) [ project | dataset ]
• Raymond P.L. Buse, Westley Weimer: Automatic Documentation Inference for Exceptions. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) 2008: 273-281 [ project ]
• Adrienne Felt, Pieter Hooimeijer, David Evans, Westley Weimer: Talking to strangers without taking their candy: isolating proxied content. Workshop on Social Network Systems (SocialNets) 2008: 25-30
• Michael Boyer, Kevin Skadron, Westley Weimer: Automated Dynamic Analysis of CUDA Programs. Workshop on Software Tools for MultiCore Systems (STMCS) 2008
• Nicholas Jalbert, Westley Weimer: Automated Duplicate Detection for Bug Tracking Systems. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2008: 52-61
• Westley Weimer, George C. Necula: Exceptional Situations and Program Reliability. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 30(2): Article 8, 51 pages (2008)
• Westley Weimer, Nina Mishra: Privately Finding Specifications. IEEE Trans. Software Engineering (STE) 34(1): 21-32 (2008)
• Pieter Hooimeijer, Westley Weimer: Modeling bug report quality. Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2007: 34-43 (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award)
• Westley Weimer: Exception-Handling Bugs in Java and a Language Extension to Avoid Them. Advanced Topics in Exception Handling Techniques 2006: 22-41
• Westley Weimer: Patches as better bug reports. Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE) 2006: 181-190
• Westley Weimer, George C. Necula: Mining Temporal Specifications for Error Detection. Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS) 2005: 461-476
• George C. Necula, Jeremy Condit, Matthew Harren, Scott McPeak, Westley Weimer: CCured: type-safe retrofitting of legacy software. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 27(3): 477-526 (2005) [ ccured-1.3.5.tar.gz ]
• Westley Weimer, George C. Necula: Finding and preventing run-time error handling mistakes. Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) 2004: 419-431
• Jeremy Condit, Matthew Harren, Scott McPeak, George C. Necula, Westley Weimer: CCured in the real world. Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) 2003: 232-244
• Thomas A. Henzinger, Ranjit Jhala, Rupak Majumdar, George C. Necula, Grégoire Sutre, Westley Weimer: Temporal-Safety Proofs for Systems Code. Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV) 2002: 526-538
• George C. Necula, Scott McPeak, Shree Prakash Rahul, Westley Weimer: CIL: Intermediate Language and Tools for Analysis and Transformation of C Programs. Conference on Compiler Construction (CC) 2002: 213-228 [ linux 2.6.16.1 as a single merged C file ]
• George C. Necula, Scott McPeak, Westley Weimer: CCured: type-safe retrofitting of legacy code. Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) 2002: 128-139 (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award) [ ccured-1.3.5.tar.gz ]
• Stephen Adams, Thomas Ball, Manuvir Das, Sorin Lerner, Sriram K. Rajamani, Mark Seigle, Westley Weimer: Speeding Up Dataflow Analysis Using Flow-Insensitive Pointer Analysis. Static Analysis Symposium (SAS) 2002: 230-246 [ slides ]
• John Kubiatowicz, David Bindel, Yan Chen, Steven E. Czerwinski, Patrick R. Eaton, Dennis Geels, Ramakrishna Gummadi, Sean C. Rhea, Hakim Weatherspoon, Westley Weimer, Chris Wells, Ben Y. Zhao: OceanStore: An Architecture for Global-Scale Persistent Storage. Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) 2000: 190-201 (10-Year Most Influential Paper Award)

• Westley Weimer: Exceptional Situations and Program Reliability. PhD Thesis: University of California at Berkeley, Fall 2005.

Research Group

Priscila Santiesteban, Ph.D. Student

Emeritus Members

	Madeline Endres (moved on to University of Massachusetts at Amherst)   PhD Thesis: Three Lenses for Improving Programmer Productivity: From Anecdote to Evidence (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Three Lenses for Improving Programmer Productivity: From Anecdote to Evidence (PDF Slides)
	Hammad Ahmad (moved on to Carnegie Mellon University)   PhD Proposal: Understanding understanding: How do we reason about computational logic? (PDF Slides)   PhD Thesis: Understanding understanding: How do we reason about computational logic? (PDF Slides)
	Dr. Zohreh Sharafi, Senior Research Fellow (moved on to Polytechnique Montréal)
	Yu Huang (黄羽) (moved on to Vanderbilt University)   MS Thesis: Circuit Design for FPGAs in Sub-Threshold Ultra-Low Power Systems (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Understanding User Cognition: from Everyday Behavior and Spatial Ability to Code Writing and Review (PDF Slides)   PhD Thesis: Understanding User Cognition: from Spatial Ability to Code Writing and Review (PDF Slides)
	Dr. Kevin Leach, Senior Research Fellow (moved on to Vanderbilt University)   PhD Proposal: Transparent System Introspection in Support of Analyzing Stealthy Malware (PDF Slides)   PhD Thesis: Transparent System Introspection in Support of Analyzing Stealthy Malware (PDF Slides)
	Colton Holoday (moved on to MathWorks)   Master's Degree Project: Logi: an empirical model of heat-induced disk drive data loss and the impact on file system performance
	Kevin Angstadt (moved on to St. Lawrence University)   MCS Thesis: RAPID Programming of Pattern-Recognotion Processors (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Improving Programming Support for Hardware Accelerators Through Automata Processing Abstractions (PDF Slides)   PhD Thesis: Improving Programming Support for Hardware Accelerators Through Automata Processing Abstractions (PDF Slides)
	Jonathan Dorn (moved on to GrammaTech) (co-advised with Jason Lawrence)   MCS Thesis: A General Software Readability Model (PDF Slides) [ dataset ]   PhD Proposal: Improving Programs Through Source Code Transformations (PDF Slides)   PhD Thesis: Optimizing Tradeoffs of Non-Functional Properties in Software (PDF Slides)
	Jamie Floyd (moved on to Apogee Research)   MCS Thesis: N-Prog: A Framework for Proactive Coarse-Grained Diversity
	Anish Tondwalkar (moved on to UC San Diego)   MS Thesis: Finding and Fixing Bugs in Liquid Haskell (PDF Slides)
	Zachary P. Fry (moved on to GrammaTech)   MCS Thesis: Fault Localization Using Textual Similarities (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Leveraging Light-Weight Analyses to Aid Software Maintenance (PDF Slides)   PhD: Leveraging Light-Weight Analyses to Aid Software Maintenance (PDF Slides)
	Claire Le Goues (moved on to Carnegie Mellon University)   MS Thesis: Specification Mining with Few False Positives (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Automatic, Efficient, and General Repair of Software Defects using Lightweight Program Analyses (PDF Slides)   PhD: Automatic Program Repair Using Genetic Programming (PDF Slides)
	Adam Brady (moved on to Google) (co-advised with Jason Lawrence)   MCS Thesis: genBRDF: Synthesizing Novel Analytic BRDFs with Genetic Programming (PPTX Slides)
	Pieter Hooimeijer (moved on to Facebook)   MS Thesis: Generating String Inputs Using Constrained Symbolic Execution (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Decision Procedures for String Constraints (PDF Slides)   PhD:Decision Procedures for String Constraints (PPTX Slides)
	Raymond P.L. Buse (moved on to Google)   MCS Thesis: Automatic Documentation Inference for Exceptions (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: Automatically Describing Program Structure and Behavior (PDF Slides)   PhD: Automatically Describing Program Structure and Behavior (PDF Slides)
	Kinga Dobolyi (moved on to George Mason University)   MS Thesis: Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions (PDF Slides)   PhD Proposal: An Exploration of User-Visible Errors to Improve Fault Detection in Web-based Applications (PPT Slides)   PhD: An Exploration of User-Visible Errors in Web-based Applications to Improve Web-based Applications (PDF Slides)

Past Courses

My teaching and advising have been well-received by generous students.