TutorialsASE 2025

Here are the ASE ’25 tutorials and a brief description of each:

A Tutorial on Software Engineering for FMware

• Time: Sun 16 Nov, 9:00am–12:00pm (3 hours)
• Nickname: SE4FMware
• Authors: Keheliya Gallaba∗ , Dayi Lin∗ , Filipe R. Cogo∗ , Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur∗ , Benjamin Rombaut∗ , Gustavo A. Oliva∗ , Jiahuei (Justina) Lin∗ , Kirill Vasilevski∗, and Ahmed E. Hassan†
• Institutions: ∗Centre for Software Excellence, Huawei Canada; †Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
• Duration: 3 hours
• Abstract: Foundation Models (FMs) have given rise to FMware, a new generation of software now widely adopted in industrial products, such as GitHub Copilot, and across Software Engineering (SE) research. Despite this adoption, developing reliable FMware is challenging due to the stochastic nature of FMs. This tutorial presents the latest research and industry practices for engineering FMware from a pragmatic SE perspective, rather than artificial intelligence (AI), ensuring its accessibility to ASE participants. This tutorial includes novel content on recent advancements, including agentic architectures, FMware compilers, observability, and the “FM-as-a-judge” evaluation pattern.

Quantum Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering

• Time: Sun 16 Nov, 2:00pm–3:30pm (1.5 hour)
• Nickname: QAI4SE
• Authors: Shaukat Ali, Xinyi Wang
• Institutions: Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway; Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway; University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Program:
  • Part 1: Introduction (25 mins)
  • Part 2: Practical Applications (55 mins)
  • Part 3: Research Directions and Challenges (10 mins)
• Abstract: Classical Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been applied to solve many traditional software engineering problems, including requirements engineering, testing, and debugging. Similarly, Quantum Artificial Intelligence (QAI)—classical AI enhanced with quantum computing—has recently been used to address software engineering challenges, including test optimization, test case generation, and code smell detection. As an emerging topic in software engineering, introducing QAI to the ASE conference audience will help spark interest among young researchers, senior researchers, and practitioners. This tutorial will provide an overview of quantum computing and QAI, followed by QAI applications in classical software engineering problems, such as testing, through both quantum search and optimization, as well as quantum machine learning. We will demonstrate these applications using real-world and industrial software engineering datasets.
• Website: https://simula-complex.github.io/qai4se/
• Basic required knowledge of the attendees of the tutorial: SE community (researchers and practitioners at any career stage) with no or little quantum computing knowledge

Bridging the Gap between Causal Inference and Software Engineering

• Time: Sun 16 Nov, 4:00PM–5:30PM (1.5 hour)
• Nickname: CI&SE
• Authors: Pingchuan Ma, Zhenlan Ji, Zongjie Li, and Shuai Wang
• Institutions: HKUST, Hong Kong
• Duration: 1.5 hour
• Abstract: While correlation doesn’t imply causation, being able to tell the difference is essential in software engineering, where systems often involve complex interactions between variables. Causal inference offers a principled approach to uncovering true causal relationships and supports more accurate debugging, optimization, and decision-making. Nonetheless, applying these methods in practice is challenging due to the dynamic and complex nature of software environments. At the same time, core software engineering practices, like testing and verification, can inform and improve causal inference techniques. This tutorial aims to bridge these two areas. We provide an accessible introduction to causal inference, explore how it can be applied to real-world software engineering tasks like debugging and testing, and highlight the two-way synergy that emerges when these fields come together. With case studies and practical examples, we illustrate how causal thinking can enhance software development, and how engineering insights can in turn advance causal analysis.

Basics of Static Analysis using SootUp

• Time: Thur 20 Nov, 9:00am–12:00pm (3 hours)
• Nickname: SootUp
• Authors: Jonas Klauke, Stefan Schott, Markus Schmidt, Prof. Dr. Eric Bodden
• Institutions: Paderborn University, Germany and Fraunhofer IEM, Germany
• Duration: 3 hours
• Abstract: Static code analysis is the process of examining source code without executing it in order to uncover potential bugs, security vulnerabilities, and issues related to code quality. For over two decades, the popular Soot framework has played a pivotal role in advancing program analysis research. However, its legacy architecture has begun to show its age, limiting its ability to meet the evolving demands of modern software development. SootUp is a modern reimplementation of Soot, designed from the ground up with a modular architecture and an intuitive API that streamlines the development of custom static analyses. This tutorial provides a hands-on introduction to static analysis enabled by SootUp, guiding participants through its key features, design choices, and improvements over Soot. Through a combination of conceptual overviews and live, interactive exercises led by the instructors, attendees will actively engage in constructing call graphs, code property graphs, and implementing intra- and inter-procedural analyses using SootUp. Participants will leave with a solid understanding of how to incorporate SootUp into their own static analysis workflows or how to establish one in the first place.
• Required knowledge: Basic Java knowledge

Call for Tutorials

Tutorials address a wide range of mature topics from theoretical foundations to practical techniques and tools for automated software engineering. The general chair and organizers will decide the exact dates after all proposals have been reviewed and accepted. Tutorials are intended to provide scientific background on themes relevant to ASE’s research audience.

Instructors are invited to submit proposals for 1.5h, half-day (3h) and full-day (6h) tutorials and, upon selection, are required to provide tutorial notes on the topic of presentation in PDF. Tutorial proposals are limited to 2 pages.

Submission

Proposal submissions should include the following information:

• Name and affiliation of the proposer/organizer (including e-mail address)
• Name and affiliation of each additional instructor
• Instructors’ experience in the area, including other tutorials, courses, etc.
• Title, objective, abstract, and duration
• Outline with approximate timings
• Target audience, including the indication of level (novice, intermediate, expert)
• Assumed background of attendees * Brief biography of each instructor (for later inclusion in publicity materials)
• History of the tutorial (if it has been already presented; provide location, approximate attendance, etc.)
• Audio-visual and technical requirements
• Preferences for tutorial date, duration (1.5h, half-day or full-day), and any other scheduling constraints, with justification for full day (if a full day is proposed)

Proposals should be submitted at https://ase2025tutorials.hotcrp.com/.

All submissions must be in PDF format and conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type, LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf option).

Tutorial proposals will be reviewed by the ASE 2025 tutorial committee. Acceptance of the proposal will be based on the timeliness and expected interest in the topic and the potential for attracting a sufficient number of participants. Note that tutorials with too few registered attendees may be cancelled.

Accepted Proposals

The authors of the accepted proposals are expected to produce the advertisement materials by the deadline. The materials include the website, the program, the date and time, the basic required knowledge of the attendants of the tutorials, and any other advertisement materials.

Important dates:

• Proposal Submission: June 13
• Proposal Notification: July 4
• Advertisement Material: July 15 (originally July 11)
• Final Notification: July 23 (originally July 18)