Michael Pradel

Michael Pradel is a full professor at the University of Stuttgart and a faculty member at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. He leads the Software Lab at the University of Stuttgart and holds additional affiliations with the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Intelligent Systems and the Stuttgart ELLIS Unit. Previously, he served as an assistant professor at TU Darmstadt, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, and a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, where he completed his PhD.

His educational background includes computer science studies at TU Dresden and engineering studies at Ecole Centrale Paris, with a master's thesis conducted at EPFL. He has taken sabbaticals at Facebook, UC Berkeley, and UCLA.

Pradel's research spans software engineering, programming languages, security, and machine learning, with a focus on tools and techniques for building reliable, efficient, and secure software. He is particularly interested in neural-symbolic software analysis, analyzing web applications, dynamic analysis, and test generation. His recent work increasingly incorporates large language models for software engineering tasks including bug detection, test generation, and program repair.

His research group has produced significant work in WebAssembly analysis, Python dynamic analysis, quantum program analysis, and automated program repair, with notable tools including Wasm-R3, DynaPyt, LintQ, and RepairAgent.

• Ernst-Denert Software Engineering Award
• Emmy Noether grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (1.3 million Euro)
• ERC Starting Grant (1.5 million Euro)
• Best/Distinguished Paper Awards at FSE (3x), ISSTA, ASE, ASPLOS, and MSR
• ACM Distinguished Member
• Multiple ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper and Artifact Awards

Pradel has advised numerous PhD students including Matteo (thesis on "Testing and Analysis of Quantum Software"), Luca (thesis on "Supporting Software Evolution via Search and Prediction"), and Daniel (thesis on program analysis for WebAssembly). His research has been supported by significant grants including the Emmy Noether grant and ERC Starting Grant. He serves in leadership roles for major conferences including PC co-chair for FSE 2027 and area chair for ICSE 2026.

Pradel leads the Software Lab at the University of Stuttgart, which includes visiting professors Cristian Cadar and Prem Devanbu (both supported by Humboldt Research Awards). The lab maintains active collaborations with institutions including CMU, Google, KAIST, and USI Lugano, and regularly contributes to major software engineering conferences.