Luca Di Grazia

Luca Di Grazia is a Researcher (Postdoctoral) in the STAR group at the University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland, supervised by Prof. Mauro Pezzè. He holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in Software Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, advised by Prof. Michael Pradel. Previously, he completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, with a minor in Embedded Systems. His research focuses on Generative AI, Program Repair, Software Evolution, and Code Search techniques.

Education:

• Bachelor's and Master's in Computer Engineering, Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), with a thesis on "Protein classification using geometrical features for 3D face analysis".
• PhD in Computer Science (summa cum laude) from University of Stuttgart (Germany), thesis: "Supporting Software Evolution via Search and Prediction".
• Postdoctoral Researcher at USI, Switzerland.

Research Interests:

• Generative AI for software testing and bug fixing (e.g., winning an Uber competition with a GenAI tool).
• Program Repair techniques, such as PyTy for Python type errors.
• Code Search and Change Retrieval (e.g., DiffSearch engine).
• Software Evolution and Type Annotation studies in Python.

Achievements:

• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at ESEC/FSE 2022 for work on Python type annotations.
• Second prize at ACM Student Research Competition at ICSE 2022.
• Won GenAI Uber competition (2023) with a project to boost developer productivity, beating 103 teams.
• Summa cum laude PhD (2024).
• Recipient of national scholarships during his studies at Polytechnic of Turin.

Advising: Supervised seven students on projects including automated error repair and testing frameworks.

Labs/Teams: STAR group at USI, collaborating with JetBrains and Uber.