Wednesday, September 11th, 14:30–15:30

For Quality in Software Engineering, we Should All Be Feminists

Letizia Jaccheri

ABSTRACT 

Software engineering is a paradigm of human activities that incorporates our problem-solving capabilities, cognitive aspects, and social interaction. Software is an infrastructure of all industries and societies around the world, serving global users of all genders. The SE community has developed and is aiming to develop more advanced methods, techniques, and tools for supporting quality approaches to software engineering and management. However, not only there is a current gender gap in both the development and operations of software products and services, but the community lacks knowledge, tools, measurements, and even a language to quantify the problems and develop solutions. 

In 2023, internet users reached 5.3 billion, constituting 65.7% of the world population. About 70% of males and 63% of females globally use the internet, but merely 5.17% of the worldwide software developer population (27 millions) is women. Gender studies is a growing research topic in software engineering as it relates to the diversity and inclusion issues for performing and healthy teamwork. 

In the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increasing automation in the software industry, the role of humans is even more emphasized across age, culture, and gender. However, the engagement of genders in Software Engineering is not uniform. It is important to address the gender gap in software engineering urgently when new AI-intensive software systems are being created because there is a risk that AI-generated software perpetuates sexist assumptions and ideologies.

Feminism can be defined as both a theoretical perspective and a social movement aiming to diminish and ultimately eliminate sexist inequality and oppression. The concept of intersectionality explores the interconnectedness of social differences, including race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality. Feminism draws attention to the systemic power dynamics emerging from the interaction of various dimensions of social difference across individual, institutional, cultural, and societal spheres of influence.

This keynote will provide participants with a clear definition and understanding of Software Engineering and its intersection with intersectionality, which is certainly important for improving the quality of products and processes. 

This work is partially supported by the EUGAIN COST Action CA19122 - European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics.

Dr. Letizia Jaccheri is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Jaccheri has been teaching courses in software engineering at various levels and acted as one of the independent directors of Reply S.p.A. From 2013 to 2017 she was department head for the Computer Science department at NTNU. She is ACM Distinguished speaker since 2018. She has got two gender equality prizes for her work to attract and retain women to computer science. Letizia Jaccheri has a long record of research leadership in interdisciplinary projects with a focus on gender and software engineering. She is involved in several research projects, and she leads the COST Action CA19122 Gender Balance in Informatics EU GAIN with 155 members from 39 European countries. Letizia has plans to continue to contribute to address the issue of diversity in software engineering.

Homepage – https://letiziajaccheri.org/ 

Thursday, September 12th, 9:00–10:00

How to Achieve System Quality in 10 Easy Steps

Sigrid Eldh

ABSTRACT 

This keynote will help you to achieve quality for any software system, by following an easy 10-step approach. Defining what, how, when and with whom provides a roadmap for a successful change. This talk will provide you with key contributors to attain quality, a clear strategy, and a way to champion your goals and describe what you need to overcome challenges. Through a set of easy to grasp methods you can utilize, combined with new technology, you will be equipped to venture further on the quest to get high-quality systems at a decent cost. A lifetime of transforming and improving systems quality will be used to exemplify the journey, including the current best know-how from research and practice of areas from e.g., quality metrics, automation to AI-augmentation will be leading you to clear improvements and success.

Dr. Sigrid Eldh is a software industry veteran, with 40 years in the field. She currently leads research in software engineering and testing at Ericsson (in Stockholm, Sweden), where she has worked for 30 years. Sigrid is passionate about software quality and ways to automate software, testing, and validation, while keeping humans in charge. Her key interest is how software — which is everywhere — can aid humanity and be used in a variety of ways to solve challenging problems and improve lives. She received a PhD “On Test Design” from Mälardalen University, where she also works as a senior lecturer. She is also an adjunct professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada. Sigrid served as chair on many key conferences, including ICSE-SEIP, NEXTA, AST, A-MOST, and A-Test; she has been industrial chair for ISSRE and ICST; and she has served as a reviewer for numerous program committees and journals. She is now the Editor-In-Chief for IEEE Software Magazine. 

Homepage – https://www.es.mdu.se/staff/67-Sigrid_Eldh

Wednesday, September 11th, 11:05–11:50

Fostering Safe Online Spaces: Insights from a Career in Online Harms Research, from PhD to PI

Stefano Cresci

ABSTRACT 

This talk explores experiences and lessons learned from my academic journey, first as a PhD student and up to now as Principal Investigator. I will discuss my early steps and the first challenges I faced as a PhD student in the area of social media analytics. I will discuss how I transitioned to post-doc, increasing my collaborations and focusing my research on the study and contrast to online harms. I will explain what moved me to pursue my own ideas and interests, which led me to seek independent funding. This will bring us to the current days, where I lead multiple projects, including a prestigious ERC project on content moderation, introducing new challenges and opportunities. By sharing my experiences, failures, and accomplishments towards fostering the quality of online information and the safety of online environments, I hope to empower and inspire the next generation of researchers to pursue innovative and interdisciplinary research.

Dr. Stefano Cresci received his PhD in Information Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2018. Currently, he is a Researcher at IIT-CNR in Pisa, Italy. He is Professor of “Big Data Sources, Crowdsourcing, Crowdsensing” for the PhD course in Data Science and for the post-graduate Master's degree in Big Data Analytics & Social Mining, at the University of Pisa. His professional experiences encompass both national and international collaborations with renowned research institutions and enterprises such as Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Doha, Qatar), Nokia Bell Labs (Paris, France). He is a member of the Editorial Board of IJISCRAM and in 2018, he was selected among the winners of the SAGE Ocean Concept Grant. His interests broadly fall at the intersection of Web science and Data science.

Homepage – https://www.iit.cnr.it/stefano.cresci/