Wahab Hamou-Lhadj
PhD (Ottawa Univ), Eng. (OIQ)
OCUP 2 (OMG), OCEB 2 (OMG)

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I am a Professor of Computer and Software Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University.

My research focuses on the opportunities at the intersection of Software Engineering and Data Analytics (mainly machine learning and deep learning techniques). I work on techniques that harness the wealth of information in software data (with a focus on run-time data - traces, logs, profiling metrics, machine data-) to support software development and evolution tasks, system observability and monitoring, and prediction and detection of anomalies in large streams of log/trace data.

Over the years, I have led many research and technology projects with various organizations including Ericsson, Ericsson Global AI Accelerator, CAE, Ubisoft, Marivent, Opal-RT, DRDC (Defence R&D Canada), and the Government of Canada.

I am fortunate to work with a great team of talented students and professionals. Together, we form the Software Research and Technology Lab (SRT Lab). Several of our original tools (e.g., TotalADS and CommitAssistant) have been successfully transferred to our collaborators from industry and government.

My teaching spans from undergraduate programming courses to graduate software engineering courses.

Conference Organization 2020

Recent Publications

       

Projects:

  • D2K+: Deep Learning of System Crash and Failure Reports for DevOps, Ericsson Global AI Accelerator, MITACS
  • Log Analytics for Operational Intelligence, Ubisoft, MITACS
  • CLEVER Project: Mining Code Commits for Enhanced Software Quality, Ubisoft, NSERC
  • Advancing Logging Practices in Software Engineering, NSERC
  • D2K-From Data To Knowledge for Better System Maintenance, Ericsson, MITACS
  • OpenSim: An Open Architecture for Aircraft Simulation Integration and Monitoring Methods Using the HLA Standard, Marinvent, NSERC
  • Tools and Infrastructure for OpenSim, Marinvent, CRIAQ, Aero-Connect, NSERC
  • Advanced Host-level Surveillance, DRDC, NSERC
  • Integrated Anomaly Detection Models and Techniques, DRDC, NSERC
  • Improving Software Maintenance through Advanced Trace Abstraction Techniques, NSERC
  • Kernel Tracing Techniques for Anomaly Detection in the Context of Redundancy and Diversity, DRDC, NSERC
  • Program Comprehension through Dynamic Analysis, NSERC
  • The Analysis of Execution Traces for Program Comprehension, FQRNT
  • Online Surveillance of Critical Computer Systems through Advanced Host-based Detection, Ericsson, DRDC, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, University of Toronto, ETS
  • Cyber Surveillance of Information Systems, DRDC
  • AVIO 508-Diagnostics for Real Time Distributed Multi-core Architecture in Avionics, CAE, OPAL-RT, NSERC, CRIAQ, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal
  • Tracing and Monitoring Tools for Distributed Multi-Core Systems, Ericsson, DRDC, NSERC, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, University of Ottawa
  • Building a Linux Kernel-Based Attack Taxonomy, DRDC


Services to the community:

  • Content developer of OCUP2 (OMG Certified UML Professional) certification program
  • Content developer of OCEB2 (OMG-Certified Expert in BPM) certification program
  • Member of the Executive Governance Board of ITAC BTM Forum, a leader in digital transformation and disruptive technologies
  • Chair: The ISSRE 3rd International Workshop on Software Faults (IWSF), 2019
  • Chair: The 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), RENE Track, 2019
  • Chair: The 41st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, Posters Track, 2019
  • Chair: The Canadian Engineering Education Association, Worshops Track, 2020

Media

RECENT BLOG

April 23, 2020. My thoughts on the adoption of COVID-19 contact tracing apps.

LATEST NEWS

April 2021. Congratulations to Rui Zhou for his new position at CGI as a Consultant and Full-stack Java Developer.
March 2021. Congratulation to Md Shariful Islam for successfully defending his PhD thesis. The thesis can be downloaded here.
February 2021. I am pleased to welcome a new PhD student, Issam Sedki. Issam, who is co-supervised by Dr. O. Ait-Mohamed will work on using deep learning techniques to the analysis of large logs. Welcome aboard!
January 2021. I am pleased to announce that our paper "EnHMM: On the Use of Ensemble HMMs and Stack Traces to Predict the Reassignment of Bug Report Fields," is accepted in SANER 2021.
January 2021. New ASE journal paper: "ALBA: a model-driven framework for the automatic generation of Android location-based apps"
January 2021. New SoSym paper: "MUPPIT: A Method for Using Proper Patterns in Model Transformations"
December 2020. See video of our paper titled "An analysis of the use of CVEs by IoT malware" presented at the 13th International Symposium on Foundations & Practice of Security (FPS 2020). This work is in collaboration with Professors R. Khoury and S. Halle from UQAC.

October 2020. See video of our paper on "Automatic Prediction of the Severity of Bugs Using Crash Traces" presented at ICSME 2020. Read full paper.

August 2020. Congratulations to my student Rui Zhou for successfully defending his Master's thesis on the topic of "A Study on Data Leakage Caused by Poor Logging Practices". See his talk based on the thesis at SANER 2020:
June 2020. I am glad to join the technical PC of ICSE'21 Software Engineering in Practice Track.
May 2020. SRT Lab welcomes three new students Taranpreet, Komal, and Sauradip. Welcome aboard!
May 2020. My lab is renamed Software Research and Technology Lab (SRT Lab) to reflect the evolution of my research over the years.
March 2020. Our paper on "A study of run-time behavioral evolution of benign versus malicious apps in Android," is now published in Elsevier Journal of Information and Software Technology (IST).
February 2020. Our paper on "A Systematic Literature Review on Automated Log Abstraction Techniques" is now published in Elsevier Journal of Information and Software Technology (IST). Congrats to the team.
February 2020. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj gave an invited talk on "An Industrial Case Study on Predicting and Detecting Faulty Programs Using ML" at FETCH'20 .
January 2020. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj received new funding from Ericsson Global AI Accelerator to develop techniques and tools based on deep learning methods and run-time data (logs and traces) to manage system crash and failure reports with the objective of improving the productivity of Ericsson DevOps analysts.

January 2020. Congratulations to PhD student Kobra (Ava) Khanmohammad for defending successfully her PhD thesis on "Leveraging the use of API call traces for mobile security".

October 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj gave an invited talk at ISCLP, one of the largest seminars of the Aerospace Industry in France. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj talked about CommitAssistant: A tool for improving software quality using machine learning/AI and its applications to the Aero industry.

October 2019. Our paper on "Automatic Prediction of the Severity of Bugs Using Stack Traces and Categorical Features" is accepted for publication in the Elsevier Journal of Information and Software Technoogy (IST). Congratulations to the team.
September 2019. Congratulations to Korosh Sabor for successfully defending his PhD thesis on the topic of "Automatic Bug Triaging Techniques Using Machine Learning and Stack Traces".

September 2019. Our paper "Model execution tracing: a systematic survey" received SoSym 2019 Best Paper Award. The paper was presented at MODELS 2019.
September 2019. Congratulations to Neda Ebrahimi for successfully defending her PhD thesis on "Machine Learning and Deep Learning Techniques for the Detection of Duplicate Bug Reports with Stack Traces".
July 2019. Our paper on "Empirical Study of Android Repackaged Applications," published in the Springer Journal on Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), is now available online.
June 2019. Our paper on "Lossless Compaction of Model Execution Traces" is now published in the International Journal on Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM). Congratulations to the entire team.
May 2019. If you are attending CSER (Consortium of Software Engineering Research) to be held on May 22-23 in Montreal, don't miss our talk on "Combining SE and AI to increase the autonomy and adaptability of resilient systems"!
May 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj gave a talk at the ACFAS 87e Congress-AI and Cybersecurity Track, the largest multidisciplinary gathering of scientists in the French-speaking world, on the use of deep learning to detect anomalies in software traces with applications to cybersecurity. See full agenda.

May 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj in the news:

May 2019. Our paper "An HMM-Based Approach for Automatic Detection and Classification of Duplicate Bug Reports," accepted for publication in the Elsevier Journal of Information and Software Technology (IST), is now available online. Congratulations to the whole team!
March 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj is invited to give a talk at UQAM on the use of machine learning to predict software faults at commit-time (as programmers write code), a project in collaboration with Ubisoft. The talk will be on April 10.
March 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj joins ACFAS (Association francophone pour le savoir), the principal French-language science and technology society in Canada for promoting research and innovation as well as scientific culture in the French-speaking world.
February 2019. Clever-Commit, a tool based on Commit-Assistant (also known as CLEVER) that was developed in my research lab in collaboration with Ubisoft, is now being used by Mozilla in the development of Firefox. Read more. Commit-Assistant uses AI to detect and prevent insertion of defects as programmers write code. Read full paper.
February 2019. Congratulations to PhD candidates, Neda Ebrahimi and Islam Shariful, for joining Samsung AI and Productions TMV as Data Scientists while finishing up the writing of their theses, hence doubling the success! Well done.
February 2019. Our paper on "Model execution tracing: a systematic mapping study" is now published in the proceedings of SoSym.
January 2019. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj's project on combining machine (deep) learning models and a BDI framework for enhanced anomaly detection in collaboration with Dr. Ingrid Nunes from UFRGS , Brazil won the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program (ELAP) Competition. PhD student Joao Faccin is the recipient of the awarded scholarship. Congratulations to Joao!
November 2018. Dr. Hamou-lhadj was invited to participate in the "Colloque du scientifique en chef en collaboration avec Ubisoft La Forge -Entreprise, université, société : la synergie des savoirs," organized by Fonds de Recherche du Quebec (FQR) and Ubisoft.
November 2018. Our paper on "Exploiting Parts-of-Speech for effective automated requirements traceability," is now published in Elsevier Journal of Information & Software Technology (IST).
November 2018. Students Mathieu Nayrolles (PhD) and Sama Khosravifar (MASc) at the fall graduation ceremony.
October 2018. Dr. Hamou-Lhadj gave a keynote panelist talk on "From Debugging to Repair: A Look at the Practice of Logging," at ISSRE's International Workshop on Debugging and Repair (IDEAR'18), Memphis, TN, USA.
October 2018. Congratulations to Sama Khosravifar for defending successfully her Master's thesis. Sama's work is on designing trace-based anomaly detection techniques using multi-agent systems.
September 2018. PhD student Mathieu Nayrolles featured in a Concordia STEM SIGHT article.
August 2018. Our project with Ubisoft featured on the screens of the metro of Montreal:
August 2018. Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Fabio Petrillo for his new position as an Associate Professor at l'Universite du Quebec.

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Contact Us

Electrical and Computer Engineering
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.
Montreal, Quebec, H3G 2W1
Office: EV 5.213
wahab dot hamou-lhadj at concordia dot ca
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