The Future of Automated Debugging and Software Testing with Harlan D Mills Award Winner Andreas Zeller
Hardware-based protections validate what software cannot independently verify. They shift visibility from reactive observation to foundational assurance. This article takes a deeper look at the what, why, and how.An interview with Andreas Zeller, recipient of the 2026 IEEE Harlan D. Mills Award.
For decades, my mission was to help developers build better software. Now I help anyone, including AI:
https://andreas-zeller.infoIn a call "retrieve(account: string)", nobody checks the contents of "account". What if we could specify its type not just as a string, but as a formal language - say, a regex "[0-9]+"? In our new paper "FLAT: Formal Languages as Types" with Fengmin Zhu, we do exactly this - for better type checking and even test generation:
https://doi.acm.org/?doi=3799978My successor as a professor will be some AI video tutor with the appearance of Brad Pitt, available 24/7, unlimited patience, personalized towards each student, the ability to teach any subject ever discussed in a textbook, and a cost of < 1$/hour. Good thing I can still do research! (Now wait...)
"Should Computer Scientists Experiment Less?" This is the title of my upcoming Harlan D. Mills Award Talk at ICSE 2026 on the past, present, and future of Software Engineering research. Looking forward to lots of productive discussions!
https://conf.researchr.org/details/icse-2026/icse-2026-main-plenaries/8/IEEE-Computer-Society-Harlan-D-Mills-Award-and-Talk-by-Andreas-Zeller-Should-ComputIEEE Computer Society Harlan D. Mills Award and Talk by Andreas Zeller: Should Computer Scientists Experiment Less? On the past, present, and future of software engineering research (ICSE 2026 - Main Plenaries) - ICSE 2026
This year, ICSE 2026 innovates with an expanded Main Plenaries program—bringing a total of four exceptional keynote talks to the main conference stage. Across Wednesday to Friday, these sessions gather the entire ICSE community in one room to reflect on where software engineering is heading, from AI-driven development and AIware-centric systems to software supply chain security, research methodology in phygital settings, and the governance of software and algorithms.
The Main Plenaries also include several of the conference’s core moments: the official welcome and program overview, major a ...
Impact award! I am happy to report that my ICSE 2006 paper "Mining metrics to predict component failures," with Nachi Nagappan and Thomas Ball, has been selected to receive a retrospective ICSE SEIP Most Influential Paper Award for its significant and lasting impact on the software engineering community. Read it here:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1134285.1134349With more and more AI-generated code, comprehensive system testing becomes more important than ever. Our new paper "Language-Based Protocol Testing" (with Alexander Liggesmeyer and Pepe Zamudio), shows how to specify and test all details of how programs interact. Implemented as part of
#Fandango!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20308On my way to Savannah, Georgia to an IFIP WG 4.3 meeting, where I’ll present our work on Parameterized Compiler Testing (a joint work with my fantastic co-workers Addison Crump and Alexi Turcotte)
#Fandango 1.1 is now available! With this release,
#Fandango becomes a full-fledged _protocol fuzzer_, happily exploring states and messages of protocols such as FTP or DNS. Thanks to José Antonio Zamudio Amaya. Valentin Huber, Alexander Liggesmeyer, and Marius Smytzek for their hard work!
Find Fandango at
https://fandango-fuzzer.github.io/ About time: A multi-celebration for becoming a member of Academia Europaea, my SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award, my 60th birthday, becoming an IEEE Fellow, _and_ getting the 2026 IEEE Harlan D. Mills Award. With cake and fizzy drinks!
