I am recruiting graduate and undergraduate research assistants (esp. PhD). See lab page for details.

Lab overview

Hi, I’m Jamie! I am an Assistant Professor at Purdue University, in the Elmore Family School (department) of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

I lead the Duality Lab. We study the engineering of software-intensive computing systems. We are specifically interested in how software-intensive systems fail and how these failure modes can be mitigated. We want to reduce the number of times that engineers repeat their mistakes. Two values inform our research:

• We apply a “dual” socio-technical philosophy — high-quality systems must be engineered using both human and technical perspectives, and analysis of failures and mitigations must consider the engineered product as well as the underlying engineering process.
• We are empiricists; we strive to measure the practical impact of problems and solutions.

We present our research in software engineering (ICSE, FSE, ASE) and cybersecurity (S&P, USENIX) conferences.

Several organizations support our research, including the US National Science Foundation, Google, Cisco, and Rolls Royce.

Use the links at the top to learn more about our activities.

Announcements

This disorganized list summarizes my research, teaching, and service activities.

2024

• Kelechi will intern at Microsoft Research this summer. Congrats, Kelechi!
• Serving on the ISSTA’25 PC.
• Jason Jones defends his MSc thesis: “A Quantitative Comparison of Pre-Trained Model Registries to Traditional Software Package Registries”.
• Paper on cybersecurity guidelines: FSE 2024. Congrats to Jesse and Dharun!
• REU alumnus and collaborator Matt Hyatt of Loyola University-Chicago receives NSF GRFP and DOD NDSEG fellowships. Congrats, Matt!
• Taylor R. Schorlemmer defends his MSc thesis: “Software Supply Chain Security: Attacks, Defenses, and the Adoption of Signatures”.
• With Prof. Machiry, Ritvik, Jayashree, Srihari, and Paschal’s poster won Best Poster at Purdue’s 2024 CERIAS symposium. Congrats folks!
• Paper on Software Signing: IEEE S&P 2024. Congrats to Taylor for sharing his MSc thesis with the world.
• Paper on Cyber Threat Hunt: USENIX Security 2024. Congrats to Trey for sharing his MSc thesis with the world.
• Paschal will intern with the security team at Qualcomm this summer. Congrats, Paschal!
• Paper on pre-trained models: MSR 2024. Congrats to Wenxin and the team!
• Educational research paper on applying systems thinking to teach threat modeling: ASEE 2024. Congrats to Sid and Preeti, and thanks to the patient students of ECE 461.
• Educational research paper on the unfettered use of LLMs in a software engineering course: ASEE 2024. Congrats to Ben, Lexy, and Sid.
• Paschal and I will serve on the program committee for IEEE SecDev 2024.
• Dharun will intern with the RISE team at Microsoft Research this summer. Congrats, Dharun!
• Serving on the EuroSec 2024 PC.
• Poster on GDPR: ICSE-Poster 2024. Congrats to the Virginia Tech collaborators!
• Presentation at Michigan Tech University about software engineering with pre-trained models

2023

• Serving on the ICSE 2025 PC, Technical track
• Presentation at Carnegie Mellon University about software engineering with pre-trained models
• Paper on applying large language models to cybersecurity failures: SCORED 2023. Congrats to Tanmay, Dharun and the team!
• Presentation at the University of Notre Dame about the challenges of working with pre-trained models
• Serving on the ISSTA 2024 PC, Technical track
• Presentation at Argonne National Labs about pre-trained models.
• Serving on the SANER 2024 PC, Early Research Achievements track
• Paper on cybersecurity vulnerabilities in embedded network stacks: ASE 2023. Congrats to Paschal and the team!
• Serving as a judge for CSAW 2023
• Paper on the role of policy-process-product theory in empirical software engineering: ESEC/FSE-IVR 2023. Congrats to Kelechi and the team!
• Presentation at the ONNX Community Day event hosted by NVIDIA. Joint talk by me and Purvish Jajal.
• Serving on the SCAM 2023 PC, Engineering track
• Paper on software engineering for machine learning: JVA 2023. Congrats to the whole team – This one was “authors sorted alphabetically”
• Geoffrey Cramer defends his MSc thesis: “An Empirical Study of Trust & Safety Engineering in Open-Source Social Media Platforms”.
• William “Trey” Maxam defends his MSc thesis: “Discovering U.S. Government Threat Hunting Processes and Improvements”. He returns to the US Coast Guard Academy as an instuctor.
• ECE@Purdue renewed my three-year contract – now it’s tenure or bust
• Rolls Royce renews support for our research in embedded systems security
• (Best) poster on securing the machine learning supply chain. Congrats Taylor!
• Paschal will take a 2023 internship on software supply chain security with a research group at Google.
• Dharun will take a 2023 internship on learning from engineering failure with the German NASA.
• Cisco funds research on software engineering for computer vision.
• Serving on an NSF:CISE panel.
• Paper on learning from engineering failure: SERP4IoT 2023. Congrats Dharun!
• Paper on security for embedded systems: LCTES-WIP 2023. Congrats Ming!
• Paper on security for embedded systems: DSN-Disrupt 2023. Congrats Jayashree!
• Paper on pre-trained models: MSR-Dataset 2023. Congrats Wenxin+Nick!
• Serving on the LCTES 2023 PC, Technical track
• Paper on pre-trained models: ICSE 2023. Congrats Wenxin!
• Serving on the ESEC/FSE 2023 PC, Technical track.
• Paper on secure regular expressions: S&P 2023
• Google renews support for our research on software engineering for machine learning

2022

• Paper on engineering education: Frontiers journal on study abroad (Frontiers 2022). Congrats Kirsten!
• Cisco funds research on software engineering for pre-trained neural network models
• Serving on the ASE 2022 PC, Doctoral Symposium track
• Paper on mining software repositories: ASE-Tools 2022. Congrats Nick!
• Paper on software engineering for machine learning: SERP4IoT 2022. Congrats Nikhil!
• Elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• Cisco funds research on securing software supply chains
• NSF funds research on securing software supply chains
• Paper on energy efficient computing: SANER 2022. Congrats Qiang!
• Paper on computer vision: ISLPED 2022. Congrats Abhinav!
• Paper on learning from engineering failure: ASE-NIER 2022. Congrats Dharun!
• Paper on pre-trained models: ESEC/FSE-IVR 2022. Congrats Diego!
• Paper on learning from engineering failure: ESEC/FSE-IVR 2022. Congrats Paschal!
• Award for engineering education: Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award, ECE@Purdue 2022. Thank you.
• Paper on engineering education: DREE 2022. Congrats to me!
• Paper on pre-trained models: SCORED 2022. Congrats Wenxin!
• Serving on the SCORED 2022 PC, Technical track
• Paper on secure software supply chains: SCORED 2022. Congrats Chinenye+Taylor!
• Paper on secure regular expressions: ICSE 2022. Congrats Efe+Xin!

2021

• Rolls Royce funds research on embedded systems security.
• Google funds research on software engineering for machine learning.
• Purdue funds research on computing education.
• Serving on the ICSE 2021 PC, Demonstrations track.
• NSF funds research on secure regular expressions.
• Paper on computer vision: ISLPED 2021. Congrats Abhinav!
• NSF funds research on software engineering for computer vision.
• Paper on mutation analysis in software engineering education: JSS 2021.
• Award for engineering education: VIP Outstanding Mentor, 2021. Thank you.
• Paper on intercultural competency in software engineering education: ACIEE 2021. Congrats Nicole!
• Serving on the ASE 2021 PC, Technical track. Distinguished reviewer award!
• Serving on the ESEC/FSE 2021 PC, Artifact track.

2020

• Poster on software engineering for machine learning: SIAM CSE 2020. Congrats Naveen!
• Paper on engineering education: JIEE journal (JIEE 2020). Congrats Desen!
• The Duality Lab is founded. Hello world.