Conference Papers for ICSE 2026
UC Irvine at ICSE 2026
The International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), the flagship conference of the software engineering research community, will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 12–18, 2026. UC Irvine’s Department of Informatics will have a strong presence throughout the week, with faculty, students, and alumni contributing across nearly every dimension of the conference.
UCI researchers are authors on 13 papers and presentations in the main ICSE program and 6 more at co-located workshops and conferences, spanning topics from AI-assisted development and autonomous driving to software education and accessibility. Department members also play key organizational roles, including Thomas Zimmermann as Program Co-Chair, André van der Hoek as Future of SE Co-Chair, and Iftekhar Ahmed as Student Research Competition Co-Chair, along with more than 20 program and steering committee memberships across ICSE and affiliated venues.
The week also brings recognition for outstanding work: Daye Nam earned an ICSE 2026 NIER Distinguished Paper award and a Distinguished Reviewer award, while Thomas Zimmermann receives the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award and an ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper award for foundational research dating back to MSR 2005.
Read on for the full list of UCI papers, presentations, committee roles, and awards at ICSE
Papers & Presentations – ICSE (13)
| Title | Authors (UCI Authors in bold) | Time | Room | Track |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading Between the Lines: Scalable User Feedback via Implicit Sentiment in Developer Prompts | Daye Nam, Malgorzata Salawa, Satish Chandra | Wed 15 Apr 2026 12:00 - 12:15 | Oceania V | ICSE NIER Distinguished Paper |
| What Makes a Great Software Quality Assurance Engineer? | Roselane Silva Farias, Iftekhar Ahmed, Eduardo Almeida | Wed 15 Apr 2026 14:45 - 15:00 | Oceania IV | ICSE Journal First |
| Game Changer" or "Overenthusiastic Drunk Acquaintance"? Generative AI Use by Blind and Low Vision Software Professionals in the Workplace | Yoonha Cha, Victoria Jackson, Lauren Shu, Stacy Branham, Andre van der Hoek | Wed 15 Apr 2026 16:15 - 16:30 | Oceania IV | ICSE Research Track |
| DeFT: Maintaining Determinism and Extracting Unit Tests for Autonomous Driving Planning | Yuqi Huai, Yuntianyi Chen, Ziwen Wan, Alfred Chen, Joshua Garcia | Wed 15 Apr 2026 16:45 - 17:00 | Oceania IX | ICSE Research Track |
| Evolving with AI: A Longitudinal Analysis of Developer Logs | Agnia Sergeyuk, Eric Huang, Dariia Karaeva, Anastasiia Serova, Yaroslav Golubev, Iftekhar Ahmed | Wed 15 Apr 2026 17:15 - 17:30 | Oceania IV | ICSE Research Track |
| Inside Out: Uncovering How Comment Internalization Steers LLMs for Better or Worse | Aaron Imani, Mohammad Moshirpour, Iftekhar Ahmed | Thu 16 Apr 2026 16:15 - 16:30 | Oceania IX | ICSE Research Track |
| Towards a feasible evaluation function for search-based merge conflict resolution | Heleno de Souza Campos Junior, Gleiph Ghiotto L. de Menezes, Marcio Barros, Andre van der Hoek, Leonardo Murta | Fri 17 Apr 2026 11:15 - 11:30 | Oceania VIII | ICSE Journal First |
| Teamwork in Software Engineering Education: Exploring Team Dynamics and Challenges Across Course Projects | Yu Lu, Niklas Meissner, Matthew J. Bietz, Sergio Gago-Masague, André van der Hoek | Fri 17 Apr 2026 12:15 - 12:30 | Oceania VI | ICSE SEET |
| Future of Software Engineering: Toward a Healthy Software Engineering Community | Margaret-Anne Storey, Andre van der Hoek | Fri 17 Apr 2026 14:00 - 15:30 | Plenary (Asia II + III + Hall) | ICSE Panel |
| Breaking Strong Encapsulation: A Comprehensive Study of Java Module Abuse | Yirui He, Yongbo Chen, Jessy Ayala, Yecheng Zhou, Qiran Wang, Joshua Garcia | Fri 17 Apr 2026 14:45 - 15:00 | Oceania I | ICSE Research Track |
| The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity in Software Development: A Research Agenda | Victoria Jackson, Bogdan Vasilescu, Daniel Russo, Paul Ralph, Maliheh Izadi, Rafael Prikladnicki, Sarah D'Angelo, Sarah Inman, Anielle Severo Lisboa de Andrade, Andre van der Hoek | Fri 17 Apr 2026 16:30 - 16:45 | Oceania V | ICSE Journal First |
| Future of Software Engineering Research: The SIGSOFT Perspective | Massimiliano Di Penta, Kelly Blincoe, Marsha Chechik, Claire Le Goues, David Lo, Emerson Murphy-Hill, Thomas Zimmermann | ICSE Future of Software Engineering | ||
| SE Journals in 2036: Looking Back at the Future We Need to Have | Tim Menzies, Paris Avgeriou, Robert Feldt, Mauro Pezze, Abhik Roychoudhury, Miroslaw Staron, Sebastian Uchitel, Thomas Zimmermann | ICSE Future of Software Engineering |
Papers & Presentations – Co-located Events and Workshops (6)
| Title | Authors (UCI Authors in bold) | Time | Room | Track |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grasping AI Reliance in Program Comprehension and Coding through the AIRELI Persona Taxonomy | Tarek Alakmeh, Norman Anderson, Victoria Jackson, Guilherme Vaz Pereira, Umit Akirmak, Anthony Estey, Rafael Prikladnicki, Andre van der Hoek, Margaret-Anne Storey, Thomas Fritz | Sun 12 Apr 2026 14:35 - 14:45 | Europa II | International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC) Research Track |
| Toward Collecting Evidence of Design Work in Software Maintenance Meetings: Preliminary Results from a Case Study | Janet Burge, Adriana Meza Soria, Andre van der Hoek | Mon 13 Apr 2026 10:15 - 10:27 | Bora Bora III | International Workshop on Designing Software |
| Using Generative AI in Software Design Education | Victoria Jackson, Susannah Liu, Andre van der Hoek | Mon 13 Apr 2026 14:00 - 14:12 | Bora Bora III | International Workshop on Designing Software |
| Understanding Dominant Themes in Reviewing Agentic AI-authored Code | Md. Asif Haider, Thomas Zimmermann | Mon 13 Apr 2026 14:00 - 15:30 | Catering and Exhibition Hall (Europa I to IV) | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) Mining Challenge |
| Beyond the Prompt: An Empirical Study of Cursor Rules | Shaokang Jiang, Daye Nam | Tue 14 Apr 2026 12:10 - 12:20 | Oceania V | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) Technical Paper |
| TritonForge: Profiling-Guided Framework for Automated Triton Kernel Optimization | Haonan Li, Keyu Man, Partha Kanuparthy, Hanning Chen, Wei Sun, Sreen Tallam, Chenguang Zhu, Kevin Zhu, Zhiyun Qian | Tue 14 Apr 2026 16:20 - 16:30 | Oceania I | International Workshop on Large Language Models for Code (LLM4Code) |
Organizing Committee (8)
| Name | Contribution |
|---|---|
| André van der Hoek | Future of SE Co-Chair in the ICSE Organizing Committee |
| Iftekhar Ahmed | Student Research Competition Co-Chair in the ICSE Organizing Committee |
| Md. Asif Haider | Schedule Chair in the ICSE Organizing Committee |
| Sam Malek | Co-organizer of the International Workshop on User Interface and Experience for Software Engineering (UISE) |
| Thomas Zimmermann | Program Co-Chair in the ICSE Organizing Committee |
Committee Memberships (19)
| Name | Role | Venue / Context |
|---|---|---|
| Andre van der Hoek | Program Committee Member | International Workshop on Designing Software |
| David Redmiles | Program Committee Member | ICSE Software Engineering Education and Training (SEET) |
| David Redmiles | Program Committee Member | International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) Research Track |
| Daye Nam | Program Committee Member | ICSE Research Track |
| Emily Navarro | Program Committee Member | ICSE Software Engineering Education and Training (SEET) |
| Hang Du | Junior Program Committee Member | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) Technical Track |
| Iftekhar Ahmed | Program Committee Member | ICSE Software Engineering in Society within the SE in Society (SEIS) |
| Iftekhar Ahmed | Program Committee Member | ICSE Research Track |
| Iftekhar Ahmed | Program Committee Member | International Workshop on Integrated Development Environments (IDE Workshop) |
| Joshua Garcia | Program Committee Member | ICSE Research Track |
| Joshua Garcia | Program Committee Member | Journal Ahead Workshop (JAWs) |
| Md Rakib Hossain Misu | Junior Program Committee Member | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) Technical Track |
| Sam Malek | Program Committee Member | International Workshop on Code Translation, Transformation, and Modernization (ReCode) |
| Thomas Zimmermann | Program Committee Member | International Conference on AI Engineering – Software Engineering for AI (CAIN) Research Track |
| Thomas Zimmermann | Steering Committee Member | International Conference on AI Engineering – Software Engineering for AI (CAIN) |
| Thomas Zimmermann | Steering Committee Member | ICSE |
| Thomas Zimmermann | Steering Committee Member | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) |
| Yirui He | Junior Program Committee Member | International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) Technical Track |
| Yirui He | Junior Program Committee Member | International Conference on Technical Debt |
| Yuntianyi Chen | Program Committee Member | ICSE Artifact Evaluation |
| Yuqi Huai | Program Committee Member | ICSE Artifact Evaluation |
Session Chairs (2)
| Name | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Daye Nam | Session Chair of AI for Software Engineering 28 (ICSE conference) |
| Sam Malek | Session Chair of Testing and Analysis 12 (ICSE conference) |
Awards (4)
| Name | Award |
|---|---|
| Daye Nam | ICSE 2026 Distinguished Reviewer |
| Daye Nam | ICSE 2026 NIER Distinguished Paper for “Reading Between the Lines: Scalable User Feedback via Implicit Sentiment in Developer Prompts” |
| Thomas Zimmermann | ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award for “for outstanding and transformative service to the software engineering community by broadening participation and championing open science and open access” |
| Thomas Zimmermann | ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper for “When do changes induce fixes?” (MSR 2005) |