Massimiliano Di Penta

Massimiliano Di Penta is a full professor at the University of Sannio, Italy. Previously, he has been associate professor (2011-2019) and an assistant professor (2004-2011) at the same University. He got his PhD in Computer Science Engineering in 2003, and his Master's Degree in 1999.

University services:

• 2021- : Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Information Technology for Engineering

• 2020-2022: Elected Member of the Department of Engineering Research Committee: 2020-2022

• 2014-2019: Director of the Bachelor’s and M.SC. in Computer Engineering

Research Interests:
His research is entirely focused on software engineering. His main research topics include:

• Recommender systems for software engineers

• Software analytics

• Software evolution

• Legal aspects of software development

• Continuous Integration and Delivery

Project responsibilities:

• Horizon Europe Marie Curie Doctorate Network. HORIZON-MSCA-2023-DN-01 project Innoguard - Hybrid and Generative Intelligence for Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems. Role: Unisannio Unit principal investigator

• PRIN (Italian national collaborative research project) 2022 PNRR MSR4SBOM - Mining Software Repositories for enhanced Software Bills of Materials. Role: Unisannio Unit principal investigator

• PRIN (Italian national collaborative research project) 2022 T-REX-SE (Trustworthy Recommenders for Software Engineers). Role: Project Coordinator

• PRIN (Italian national collaborative research project)  2020 EMELIOT - Engineered MachinE Learning-intensive IoT systems. Role: Unisannio Unit principal investigator

• COSMOS "Dev Ops for Cyber Physical Systems" H2020 EU Project (2021-2023): Role: Unisannio Unit principal investigator

• European Strep project Markos (The MARKet for Open Source An Intelligent Virtual Open Source Marketplace), VII framework programme. Role: Principal Investigator for the Unisannio Unit and WP responsible.

• PRIN 2006 project METAMORPHOS (MEthods and Tools for migrAting software systeMs towards web and service Oriented aRchitectures: exPerimental evaluation, usability, and technology tranSfer).

• SeCSE (Service Centric Systems Engineering),  European IP (Integrated Project), VI framework programme.

Bibliometric indices:

• He is author of over 350 papers published in international journals and conferences.

• H-index: 98 (Google Scholar), 74 (Scopus)

• i-10 index: 320 (Google Scholar)

• Overall number of citations: 31681 (Google Scholar), 18586 (Scopus)

According to the article "A bibliometric assessment of software engineering scholars and institutions (2010–2017)", Journal of Systems and Software Volume 147, January 2019, Pages 246-261, he is the second-most productive expert researcher in software engineering in the period 2010-2017. 

According to research.com, he is ranked #2 among the Italian Researchers in Computer Science

Consistently ranked, over the past five years, among the top 2% researchers (both career and single-year) - Source: Elsevier

Awards and recognitions:

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award (2024)

• Most influential paper award at the SCAM 2022 conference: Gabriele Bavota, Bernardino De Carluccio, Andrea De Lucia, Massimiliano Di Penta, Rocco Oliveto, Orazio Strollo: When Does a Refactoring Induce Bugs? An Empirical Study. Published at SCAM 2012

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Federica Pepe, Vittoria Nardone, Antonio Mastropaolo, Gabriele Bavota, Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta: How do Hugging Face Models Document Datasets, Bias, and Licenses? An Empirical Study. ICPC 2024: 370-381

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Rosalia Tufano, Antonio Mastropaolo, Federica Pepe, Ozren Dabic, Massimiliano Di Penta, Gabriele Bavota: Unveiling ChatGPT's Usage in Open Source Projects: A Mining-based Study. MSR 2024

• Best journal paper award of the year 2020: Phuong Thanh Nguyen, Juri Di Rocco, Davide Di Ruscio, Massimiliano Di Penta: CrossRec: Supporting software developers by recommending third-party libraries. J. Syst. Softw. 161 (2020)

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Oscar Chaparro, Carlos Bernal-Cárdenas, Jing Lu, Kevin Moran, Andrian Marcus, Massimiliano Di Penta, Denys Poshyvanyk, and Vincent Ng. Assessing the Quality of the Steps to Reproduce in Bug Reports. ESEC/FSE 2019

• Most influential paper award at the SANER 2019 conference: Foutse Khomh, Massimiliano Di Penta, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc: An Exploratory Study of the Impact of Code Smells on Software Change-proneness. Published at WCRE 2009

• Most influential paper award at the CASCON 2018 conference: Giuliano Antoniol, Kamel Ayari, Massimiliano Di Penta, Foutse Khomh, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc:Is it a bug or an enhancement?: a text-based approach to classify change requests. Published at CASCON 2008

•  Most influential paper award at the SANER 2017 conference: Lerina Aversano, Luigi Cerulo, Massimiliano Di Penta: How Clones are Maintained: An Empirical Study. Published at CSMR 2007

• ACM SIGEVO Impact Paper Award (most influential paper after ten years): Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta, Raffaele Esposito, Maria Luisa Villani: An approach for QoS-aware service composition based on genetic algorithms. GECCO 2005: 1069-1075

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Mario Linares Vásquez, Gabriele Bavota, Carlos Eduardo Bernal-Cárdenas, Rocco Oliveto, Massimiliano Di Penta, Denys Poshyvanyk: Optimizing energy consumption of GUIs in Android apps: a multi-objective approach. ESEC/SIGSOFT FSE 2015: 143-154

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Michele Tufano, Fabio Palomba, Gabriele Bavota, Rocco Oliveto, Massimiliano Di Penta, Andrea De Lucia, Denys Poshyvanyk: When and Why Your Code Starts to Smell Bad. ICSE  2015: 403-414

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award: Fabio Palomba, Gabriele Bavota, Massimiliano Di Penta, Rocco Oliveto, Andrea De Lucia, Denys Poshyvanyk: "Detecting bad smells in source code using change history information". 28th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, (ASE 2013), Silicon Valley, CA, USA, November 11-15, 2013: 268-278

• Best paper award: Soumaya Medini, Giuliano Antoniol, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Massimiliano Di Penta and Paolo Tonella.  “SCAN: an Approach to Label and Relate Execution Trace Segments,” WCRE 2012

• Best paper award: Gabriele Bavota, Bernardino De Carluccio, Andrea De Lucia, Massimiliano Di Penta, Rocco Oliveto, Orazio Strollo: “When Does a Refactoring Induce Bugs? An Empirical Study," SCAM 2012

• Best paper award: Andrea De Lucia, Massimiliano Di Penta, Rocco Oliveto, Annibale Panichella, Sebastiano Panichella, "Improving IR-based Traceability Recovery Using Smoothing Filters", ICPC 2011

• Distinguished paper award: Gerardo Canfora, Michele Ceccarelli, Luigi Cerulo, Massimiliano Di Penta, "Using Multivariate Time Series and Association Rules to Detect Logical Change Coupling: an Empirical Study", ICSM 2010

• Best paper award: Nioosha Madani, Latifa Guerrouj, Massimiliano Di Penta, Yann-Gael Gueheneuc, Giuliano Antoniol, "Recognizing Words from Source Code Identifiers using Speech Recognition Techniques", CSMR 2010

• Best paper award: Luigi Cerulo, Gerardo Canfora, Massimiliano Di Penta, “Identifying Changed Source Code Lines from Version Repositories” MSR 2007

• Best tool demo paper: Carmine Vassallo, Sebastiano Panichella, Massimiliano Di Penta, Gerardo Canfora: "CODES: mining source code descriptions from developers discussions." 22nd International Conference on Program Comprehension, (ICPC 2014), Hyderabad, India, June 2-3, 2014: 106-109

• Mentor of the best student project work award (ESEC/FSE 2011)

• Distinguished reviewer award: ICPC 2007, ICSM 2005, ASE 2014, ASE 2015, SANER 2017, ASE 2018, FSE 2022, ICSE 2024, ICSE 2025, MSR 2025, MSR 2026, ICPC 2026, ASE 2026

• Recognized among the 12 best reviewers of the TOSEM journal: 2007-2008, 2009-2010, 2012-2013, 2016-2017, 2018

Community Services:

• SIGSOFT Vice Chair: 2024-2027

• SE3 (coordination committee of the ICSE, FSE, and ASE conferences) chair: 2023-2025

• Executive committee member-at-the-large of the Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE): 2011-2013

Journal-related activities:

• Associate editor in chief: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering: April 2023-

• Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Software Evolution and Processes, edited by Wiley: November 2019-  

• Editorial board member of:

  • ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (2018-2023)

  • Empirical Software Engineering edited by Springer (2008-)

  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering for the term 2014-2017

  • Journal of Software: Evolution and Process edited by Wiley (2011-2019)

He co-edited several special issues on international journals: EMSE (6), JSEP (3), SQJ, JWE.

Main Conference-related activities:

Program co-chair:

• Special event of AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering: FORGE 2024

• International Conference on Software Engineering: ICSE 2023

• Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering:  ESEC/FSE 2021

• International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering: SANER 2018

• International Conference on Automated Software Engineering: ASE 2017

• International Conference on Predictor Models in Software Engineering: PROMISE 2014

• International Conference on Program Comprehension: ICPC 2013

• International Conference on Mining Software Repositories: MSR 2012, 2013

• International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution: ICSME 2012

• International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering: SSBSE 2009

• Working Conference on Reverse Engineering: WCRE 2006, 2007

• International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation: SCAM 2006

General chair/co-chair

• 42nd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2026)

• 12th  ACM/IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2015)

• 10th IEEE Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2010)

• 2nd International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering (SSBSE 2010)

• 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE 2008)

Steering committee member:

• AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering: (FORGE): 2024-

• International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): 2019-

• International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE): 2019-

• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE): 2017-

Past steering committee member:

• International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)

• International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)

• International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)

• International Conference on Predictor Models in Software Engineering (PROMISE)

• International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (SSBSE)

• International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)

• Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE)

• European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR)

He has served the program committee of over 120 conferences and workshops.
 

Keynotes:

• "Software Supply Chain Management in the AI Era: Challenges and Perspectives”, PROFES 2025, Salerno, Italy

• “Why Large Language Models will (not) Kill Software Engineering Research”, EASE 2024, Salerno, Italy

• “Software Engineering Research in the Artificial Intelligence Era: Passive Users or Change Leaders?” SANER 2023, Macau

•  "How Empirical Research Supports Tool Development: A Retrospective Analysis and new Horizons." ESEM 2021 (virtual)

• "Understanding and Improving Continuous Integration and Delivery Practice using Data from the Wild." ISEC 2020, India

• "Empirical evaluation in 2020: how big, how beautiful?" - 12th Seminar on Advanced Techniques & Tools for Software Evolution - (SATToSE 2019), July 2019, Bozen, Italy

• "Evaluating Recommender Systems for Software Developers" - International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2019), April 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark

• "On the Different Flavors of Software Smells" - IX Brasilian Conference on Software (CBSOFT), September 2018, Sao Carlos, Brasil

• "Are we Software Engineers or Lawyers? How Licenses Influence our Daily Development Tasks", VI Workshop on Software Visualization, Evolution and Maintenance (VEM 2018), September 2018, Sao Carlos, Brazil

• "Empirical assessment of software engineering research: pitfalls and solutions", The 11th Conference of PhD Students in Computer Science, Szeged, Hungary, June 25 - 27, 2018

• “Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your Engine: Being Successful with your PhD Without Crashing at the First Corner” ICSME 2017 Doctoral Symposium 

• “Diversity in search-based software testing: achievements and challenges” International Workshop on Search Based Testing (SBST 2015) May 2015, Florence, Italy

• “Search-Based Optimization Techniques in the Context of SOA and Cloud Computing", 7th International Symposium on the Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented and Cloud-Based Systems (MESOCA 2013), September 2013, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

• “Supporting Software Evolution through NLP Techniques: Achievements, Challenges, and Perils.", 13th International Workshop on Principles on Software Evolution (IWPSE 2013), St. Petersburg, Russia, August 2013

• “SBSE Meets Software Maintenance: Achievements and Open Problems”, SSBSE 2012: 27-28

• “Mining Developers' Communication to Assess Software Quality: Promises, Challenges, Perils”, WETSoM 2012

• “Nothing else matters: what predictive model should I use?”, International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering (PROMISE), 2011

• “Service Testing: Achievements and Future Research Directions”, VAST 2011

• “Empirical Studies on Software Evolution: Should we (try to) claim Causation?", IWPSE 2010

• “Fine-Grained Historical Analysis of Software System Evolution: A Framework and Examples of Applications", ECMDA workshop on Model-driven Modernization of Software Systems, June 2008

• “SOA meets search-based software engineering: research challenges and possible solutions" - Joint Astrenet/Sosornet Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Software Services, October 2007

• (with Gerardo Canfora): "SOA: Testing and Self-checking" International Workshop on Web Services - Modeling and Testing (WS-MATE 2006), June 2006

He gave tutorials in several conferences (EASE 2019, SBES 2018, ICSE 2017, ESEC/FSE 2015, SATTOSE 2015, MUD 2015, ESEC/FSE 2013, CSMR 2012, ESEC/FSE 1011, RE 2011, ICSOC 2007, WCRE 2005), summer schools (SESchool@Unibz 2015, PASED 2011 Summer School, ISSSE 2014, 2013, 2006), and PhD schools (GSSI 2018, 2017, 2015, 2014)

PhD students and postdocs:
Current PhD students:

• Daniele Bifolco
• Beena
• Zohaib Arshid
• Federico Stocchetti

Past PhD students:

• Federica Pepe (2022-2026) University of Sannio, now postodc at the University of Sannio
• Fiorella Zampetti, (2016-2019) University of Sannio, now assistant professor at the University of Sannio
• Sebastiano Panichella (2011-2014) University of Sannio, now Head of the IDeaLS Lab (Intelligent Development and Large-Scale Systems Lab) at the Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industry (AI4I)
• Salvatore Geremia, University of Molise
• Teerath Das, GSSI, L’Aquila

Past post-docs:

• Vittoria Nardone (2022-2023), now assistant professor at the University of Molise
• Fiorella Zampetti, (2019-2021), now assistant professor at the University of Sannio
• Gabriele Bavota (2012-2014) now associate professor at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
• Luigi Cerulo (2007-2009) now associate professor at the University of Sannio

DBLP Page: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/p/Penta:Massimiliano_Di
Orcid: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0340-9747
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=j6ucyOAAAAAJ