Alexandra Mendes

Alexandra Mendes is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, where she co-leads the Software Reliability Lab. She is also a senior researcher at INESC TEC and a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (HEA). In 2023, she was a Visiting Researcher at Carnegie Mellon University under the CMU Portugal Program, hosted at CyLab Security and Privacy Institute.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham, UK, and a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Minho University, Portugal.

Alexandra's research focuses on encouraging wider adoption of software verification by creating tools and methods that hide the complexities of verifying software. Her primary research interests include:

• Software Reliability
• Software Verification
• Formal Methods
• Software Engineering
• Innovative User Interfaces for formal methods
• Password Security

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on applying formal methods to practical software engineering challenges, particularly through the use of Large Language Models to enhance verification-aware languages like Dafny. She has made significant contributions to understanding contract usage in Android applications, infrastructure as code reliability, and password security through formal verification. Her work bridges theoretical formal methods with practical software engineering concerns, aiming to make verification more accessible to developers.

Alexandra has received several prestigious awards for her research:

• Amazon Research Award in Automated Reasoning (Fall 2024)
• Atlantic Security Award 2024 from the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) for exploring Large Language Models trained on Dark Web data to support decision making for Atlantic security and defence
• Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (HEA)

She actively mentors students and researchers, inviting talented individuals to join her in research opportunities in Computer Science at the University of Porto. Her funded projects include VeriFixer (focused on automated repair techniques for verification-aware programming languages) and InfraGov (addressing challenges in the reliability and security of Infrastructure as Code used in Public Administration).

Alexandra co-leads the Software Reliability Lab, which develops new methods and techniques for improving the quality and dependability of software systems, emphasizing practical tools that can have societal impact. The lab's work spans from empirical software engineering methods that can inform practitioners and direct future research, to formal methods that can verify the absence of certain types of bugs.