Michele Lanza

Michele Lanza is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, where he co-founded the faculty in 2004. He is the founder and director of the Software Institute (since 2017) and leads the REVEAL research group, focusing on software visualization, evolution, and analytics. He holds a PhD from the University of Bern (2003), where he also earned his MSc (1999), and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich.

Research Interests:

• Software Engineering
• Software Visualization (notably the 'City Metaphor')
• Mining Software Repositories (MSR)
• Software Evolution and Analytics
• Program Comprehension
• Reverse Engineering and Architecture Recovery

His recent publications (2023–2025) emphasize immersive software visualization in virtual reality, automated documentation, code refactoring, and empirical studies on developer behavior and documentation. There is a strong trend toward human-centric, visual, and data-driven approaches, often leveraging VR and interactive tools for deeper software understanding.

Scientific Awards:

• Ernst Denert Award (2003)
• Credit Suisse Teaching Award (2007, 2009)
• Best Paper Awards (SANER 2024, VISSOFT 2022, ICPC 2016)
• Most Influential Paper Award (MSR 2010)

Advising and Grants:

Prof. Lanza has supervised over 13 PhD students and numerous MSc and BSc theses, fostering a vibrant research group. He leads multiple funded projects, including SNF grants (FORCE, TUML, INSTINCT, PROBE, ESSENTIALS, BIGDATA), FFL (CSRD), and industry R&D initiatives. Funding supports travel, hardware, software, and PhD positions, enabling cutting-edge research in software engineering.

Labs and Teams:

He leads the REVEAL research group and the Software Institute at USI, which serve as hubs for innovation in software visualization, mining, and evolution. These teams are highly collaborative, interdisciplinary, and active in top-tier conferences (ICSE, FSE, ICSME, MSR, VISSOFT).