Michael Godfrey

Michael Godfrey is a Professor at the University of Waterloo's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His work focuses on software engineering, empirical studies of software systems, code review practices, and open-source software ecosystems. He holds a Ph.D., M.Sc., and B.Sc. from the University of Toronto (1997, 1988, 1986).

Research interests include software evolution, mining software repositories, provenance tracking, code duplication analysis, and program comprehension. He actively explores how developers interact with code reviews, documentation systems, and modern CI/CD pipelines. Recent work investigates app store software ecosystems, Bash scripting vulnerabilities, and deep learning API testing.

Publications span empirical studies of developer communities (e.g., Stack Overflow analysis), architectural teaching methods, and automated testing techniques like documentation-guided fuzzing. His work bridges theory and practice, addressing challenges in large-scale systems maintenance and developer productivity.

Leverages tools like Elasticsearch for repository mining and explores anomaly detection in software development. Engaged in curriculum development for software architecture education and has contributed to conferences like MSR and ICSE.