Sonia Haiduc

Sonia Haiduc is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Florida State University, where she leads the SERENE (Software Engineering: Evolution and Maintenance) research lab. Her academic career spans over a decade of contributions to software engineering research, with particular expertise in software maintenance, evolution, and program comprehension.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Wayne State University (2013)
• M.Sc. in Computer Science, Wayne State University (2009)
• B.Sc. in Computer Science, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2006)

Her research focuses on innovative approaches to assist software developers in understanding and maintaining complex software systems. Key areas include software evolution, program comprehension, concept location, source code search, empirical software engineering, and the application of information retrieval and natural language processing techniques to software engineering problems. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications to improve developer productivity and software quality.

Recent publications demonstrate a growing interest in AI-assisted software development, particularly the application of large language models to program repair, commit message assessment, and code search. Her research shows a consistent trajectory from traditional software engineering topics toward integrating modern AI techniques to solve longstanding challenges in software maintenance and evolution.

Scientific Awards:

• ACM SIGSOFT CAPS Travel award (2012, 2010)
• Google Anita Borg Scholarship (2011)
• Wayne State University Travel Awards (multiple years)
• Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant in Computer Science (2010)

Dr. Haiduc actively mentors doctoral students, currently advising three Ph.D. candidates while serving on committees for additional graduate students. She has secured research funding including an NSF SHF grant for 'Text Retrieval in Software Engineering 2.0' and an FSU CRC grant for 'Query-Specific Source Code Search Engine Configuration.'

She founded and leads the SERENE lab at Florida State University, which focuses on novel approaches to software maintenance, evolution, program comprehension, mining software repositories, and applications of natural language processing in software engineering.