about me

I am Adriana Sejfia, an Assistant Professor (Lecturer, in the UK system) at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Within the School, I am a member of the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA). Previously, I completed my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Southern California, where I was advised by Professor Nenad Medvidović, at the Software Architecture Research Group. During my PhD, my research was generously supported by the Google PhD Fellowship.

My research interests lie primarily in the field of software engineering. Specifically, I aim to help developers with their security tasks by learning from past security issues and their fixes. To that end, I make use of program analysis and machine learning to generate actionable security-related insights.

I am seeking bright, motivated PhD students to work with me on these topics. Please email me at the email provided below if you're interested.

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Education

University of Southern California

PhD in Computer Science

August 2018 - November 2023

Rochester Institute of Technology

Master of Science in Software Engineering

September 2016 - May 2018

Rochester Institute of Technology - Kosovo Campus

Bachelor of Science

Concentration: Information Technology

September 2011 - May 2015

Employment

University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics

Assistant Professor/Lecturer

Field: Software Engineering

February 2024 - present

University of Southern California, CS Department

Research Assistant

Professor: Nenad Medvidović

August 2018 - December 2023

Google Research

Research Intern

Static analysis for differential privacy

May 2022 - September 2022

Github Office of the CTO (OCTO)

Research Intern

Detection of malicious npm packages

May 2021 - September 2021

Rochester Institute of Technology, SE Department

Research Assistant

Professor: Mehdi Mirakhorli

December 2016 - May 2018

Rochester Institute of Technology - Kosovo Campus

Research Assistant

Professor: Arni Arnthorsson

January 2013 - May 2013

Publications

International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2024

Toward Improved Deep Learning-based Vulnerability Detection

Adriana Sejfia, Satyaki Das, Saad Shafiq, Nenad Medvidović

to appear

International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2022

Practical Automated Detection of Malicious npm Packages

Adriana Sejfia, Max Schäfer

Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2021

Identifying Casualty Changes in Software Patches

Adriana Sejfia, Yixue Zhao, Nenad Medvidović

Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2020

FrUITeR – A Framework for Evaluating UI Test Reuse

Yixue Zhao, Justin Chen, Adriana Sejfia, Marcelo Schmitt Laser, Jie Zhang, Federica Sarro, Mark Harman, Nenad Medvidović

International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA), 2020

Strategies for Pattern-Based Detection of Architecturally-Relevant Software Vulnerabilities

Adriana Sejfia, Nenad Medvidović

Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2019

Achilles’ Heel of Plug-and-Play Software Architectures: A Grounded Theory Based Approach

Joanna C. S. Santos, Adriana Sejfia, Taylor Corrello, Smruthi Gadenkanahlli, Mehdi Mirakhorli

Workshop on Establishing a Community-Wide Infrastructure for Architecture-Based Software Engineering (ECASE), 2019

A Pilot Study on Architecture and Vulnerabilities: Lessons Learned

Adriana Sejfia

Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), 2018

An Empirical Study of Tactical Vulnerabilities

Joanna C.S.Santos, Katy Tarrit, Adriana Sejfia, Mehdi Mirakhorli, Matthias Galster

International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA), 2017

Understanding Software Vulnerabilities Related to Architectural Security Tactics: An Empirical Investigation of Chromium, PHP and Thunderbird

Joanna C. S. Santos, Anthony Peruma, Mehdi Mirakhorli, Matthias Galstery, Jairo Veloz Vidal, Adriana Sejfia

Best Paper Award

Contact Me

<first initial><last name> [at] ed [dot] ac [dot] uk