A researcher used more than 2,000 em-dashes in his papers, revealing AI-based manipulation in 400+ papers since 1985. Professor Zeller claims he "typed" these dashes into the paper by using "two hyphens" and a "typesetting" system.

Happy New Year! I am thrilled to report that Jacek Śliwerski, Tom Zimmermann, and I won the ACM SIGSOFT 2026 Impact Award 🏆 for "When do changes induce fixes?" (MSR 2005). The paper introduced the SZZ algorithm for linking change histories and bug databases, which, since then, has become […]

Problem: Reviewers did not read the paper. Solution: Write a detailed rebuttal and point to all the places in the paper that answer their questions. New problem: Reviewers did not read the rebuttal.

In my vision talk "Should AI Coders Experiment More?" last Monday, I sketched how future AI "super-coders" would learn from their own experiments with software to acquire large amounts of knowledge and far surpass current LLM-based AI coders. The talk is now […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Today at 16:00 CET, I'll give a vision talk "Should AI Coders Experiment More?", paving the way to AI “super coders” that may become way more competent than the most experienced programmers - and also way more competent than any LLM-based coders. Details here […]

Time to get serious again. New blog post "Reviewer-Author Collusion Rings and How to Fight Them": https://andreas-zeller.info/2025/12/07/Reviewer-Author-Collusion-Rings-and-How-to-Fight-Them.html

Bonus material for The LaTeX Korrektor! Some of you asked: "What are these photos and posters in the background?" Here they come, enlarged and with some details. Enjoy! #LaTeX #LaTeXKorrektor In case you missed it, watch all six episodes of the LaTeX […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Series finale! The LaTeX Korrektor 6/6 - Ten Commandments https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HAodiqJwyD4 #LaTeX #LaTeXKorrektor Read the LaTeX advice by Diomidis Spinellis (@CoolSWEng): https://github.com/dspinellis/latex-advice All six episodes of the LaTeX […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Why, oh why does your bibliography have all titles in lowercase? WHY? The LaTeX Korrektor 5/6 - Citations: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0nk72lkp4Y0 #LaTeX #LaTeXKorrektor Missed previous episodes? This playlist has them all […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Can one reject papers because of bad typography? The LaTeX Korrektor 4/6 - Math Mode: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mc8roaLdEEA #latex #latexkorrektor Missed previous episodes? This playlist has them all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsMdQQJ_bE&list=PL6dh-k4faL8qTs8LQOsfbY70owETfWy5L

This Friday at 11:00 am, I will be giving a talk on "Language-Based Software Testing" at Imperial College in London, covering our latest and greatest in testing systems with highly complex inputs and interactions. Details here: https://srg.doc.ic.ac.uk/seminars/25-12-zeller/

The LaTeX Korrektor 3/6 - Vertical Space: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n9iLfnHMcVI #latex #latexkorrektor

The LaTeX Korrektor 2/6 - Dashes: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oDDbgwqZxxQ

For your enjoyment: "The LaTeX Korrektor" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EhsMdQQJ_bE #latex #latexkorrektor

I have been selected to become an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to analyzing software and its development process". Happy and honored! Let today be my "thanks giving" day: A huge thank you to all of you who endorsed and supported me - today and throughout […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Today 11:20 at #ASE2025/#AgenticSE, we have Kuangxiangzi Liu show how to automatically turn natural language protocol specs into #Fandango formal specs, ready for massive automatic test generation […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

And another student of mine, Bernd Gruner, presenting continuous data flow-based threat modeling with FlowStrider at #ase2025

When you generate test inputs, how can you tell whether they pass or fail? Our BASHIRI tool learns such oracles with 95% accuracy - demo today at #ase2025: https://conf.researchr.org/details/ase-2025/ase-2025-tool-demonstration-track/21/BASHIRI-Learning-Failure-Oracles-from-Execution-Features

Today at #ase2025: “The fault in our stats”, or how the majority of notebooks fails to check even the most basic statistical assumptions

On my way to Seoul, South Korea, visiting #ase2025 and then continuing to Shenzhen and Hong Kong. See you soon!

At #innosoftdays 2025 in #sevilla today, presenting novel ways for language- and AI-based software testing with #fandango https://www.innosoftdays.com/

Today I turn 60 – and what a jorney this has been! Grateful for family, friends, students, colleagues, and a scientific community that keeps me inspired. The big party? You’ll have to wait four years, when I hit my (binary) 1,000,000th birthday. 😉

On my way to ACM CCS 2025 in Taipei (via Istanbul). Meet me there!

Why don't we let ChatGPT run the country? https://chatgpt.com/share/68c91b73-2b70-800c-874a-89d3179d1e09

25 years of delta debugging! On this day in 2000, I presented “Simplifying Failure-Inducing Inputs” at ISSTA - now one of the most influential works in the 50-year history of Transactions on Software Engineering. Read all about its genesis and impact at […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Always use these six sentences in your paper rebuttal

How can you teach a machine how a program behaves? In our newest ACM TOSEM paper with Tural Mammadov, Dietrich Klakow, and Alexander Koller, we train machine learners from input/output pairs of thousands of program runs, producing models that _predict inputs […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I'm happy to report that I got an ERC Proof of Concept grant from the European Research Council! In the PROSA project, we address a weak point of LLMs: understanding and predicting how code actually behaves. We train _program-specific models_ from myriads of synthesized executions, obtaining […]

Since its release two weeks ago, our #fandango test generator has been downloaded and installed more than 25,000 times! (Hint: It's "pip install fandango-fuzzer") Check it out here: https://fandango-fuzzer.github.io/

How reliable are citation metrics? According to Google Scholar, our 2025 paper "A Retrospective on Mining Version Histories to Guide Software Changes" (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10854513) has had its first citation in 1974 – 50 years […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Introducing #Fandango 💃 — a powerful bio-inspired test generator designed to supercharge your software testing. Fandango gives you unprecedented control over test inputs, integrating grammars, constraints, and Python. Now with protocol testing! ➡️ Check out […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Today at #fse2025: * 14:40 @ Cosmos 3C “Expressing and Checking Statistical Assumptions”: 84% of surveyed notebooks violate assumptions: https://conf.researchr.org/details/fse-2025/fse-2025-research-papers/93/Expressing-and-Checking-Statistical-Assumptions OR * 14:50 at Pirsenteret “jAST […]

My #fandango team at #fse2025 / #issta2025: Alexi Turcotte, Marius Smytzek, me, Pepe Zamudio, and Laura Plein. What is #Fandango? Watch this space on Thursday for our big 1.0 release announcement and/or attend Pepe‘s presentation on Friday 16:00!

Today at #fse2025: Check out * 14:20 @ Cosmos 3C: Bernd‘s journal-first work on Information Flow Fuzzing: https://conf.researchr.org/details/fse-2025/fse-2025-journal-first/31/Presentation-Proposal-for-Finding-Information-Leaks-with-Information-Flow-Fuzzing and * 15:12 @ Vega: Laura‘s Student […]

For the first time in 25 years, I put a sticker on my laptop

@richardseidl has conducted an extensive interview on fuzzing and our latest research work. Now with video and English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u84xKFdrTzk

Knowing the input language of a software system greatly facilitates its (automated) testing. In our new GDBMiner work, we use the GNU debugger (GDB) to extract precise input grammars from any recursive descent parser that can be traced via GDB: https://doi.org/10.4230/LITES.10.1.1

Occasionally, I get a reviewer complaining, “You don’t compare against any other approach. So how can we know you’re better?” So I found a simple way to still add the "bold number column" that apparently everybody wants these days.

Fun fact: Of my nine papers that got a long-term impact award, none got a “best paper” award when they were published - and conversely, none of my “best paper”-awarded papers got an impact award later. Is this a common phenomenon?

Honors! Today at #icse2025, I received the #acm #sigsoft Influential Educator Award “for significant contributions and important innovations in automated software engineering education” (such as https://fuzzingbook.org). Thanks to all!

In today's #ast2025 keynote on our new #fandango fuzzer, I presented ongoing extensions for protocol fuzzing, oracle checking, coverage guidance, much more. Slides now available: https://conf.researchr.org/details/ast-2025/ast-2025-papers/17/Personalized-Fuzzing

If you want to meet me at #icse2025, find me * at my AST keynote: Mon 9am, Room 211 https://conf.researchr.org/details/ast-2025/ast-2025-papers/17/Personalized-Fuzzing * at the SBFT keynote: Tue 9am, Room 104 * at the ACM Awards session: Wed 4pm, plenary * at the 50 years of TSE session: Thu […]

On my way to #icse2025 in Ottawa 🇨🇦It took me 40 years to discover that Frankfurt airport has a visitor‘s terrace!

Double feature! The newest Transactions on Software Engineering features retrospectives on the most influential papers published in the journal’s first 40 years. Check out our takes on * Mining Software Repositories […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

What do you get if you combine #grammars, #constraints, #evolutionary algorithms, and #Python in one? A mighty fuzzer! Check out our latest #FANDANGO work, to appear at #ISSTA2025 […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Big congrats to my students Tim Scheckenbach and Alexander Liggesmeyer, who just won Saarland University awards for their excellent BSc and MSc degrees!

Last week, I created my second start-up! InputLab GmbH (co-founded with Stanimir Iglev and Dominic Steinhöfel @dsteinhoefel) synthesizes complex test data from XML and JSON schemas to thoroughly test your enterprise application. Check it out at https://inputlab.net (in German)

And here we have a podcast in English, again on automated testing and fuzzing, recorded by the excellent #scilux team: https://www.scilux.eu/episodes/fuzzing-testing

The last weeks have been very busy, so catching up: My work on fuzzing has been featured on @detektorfm detektor.fm (in German): https://detektor.fm/wissen/forschungsquartett-wie-fuzzing-sicherheitsluecken-findet Enjoy!

Want security in research? And research in security? Actually, why not have both? "In view of the current geopolitical landscape", #cispa has opened a new round of faculty positions, including CySec, SE, ML, theory […]