Rate My Professor Federica Sarro

Federica Sarro is Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL), where she heads the Software Systems Engineering group and leads the Software Optimisation Learning and Analytics Research (SOLAR) team, which she established in 2019. From 2014 to 2018, she led the UCL App Store Analysis (UCLappA) research team, the first in the UK dedicated to app store analysis for software engineering, culminating in the spin-out company Appredict Ltd., which she directs as company director. She earned her PhD in Systems and Software Engineering from the University of Salerno in 2013. Her research specializations encompass predictive analytics for software engineering, search-based software engineering, and empirical software engineering, with focuses on software project management, development effort estimation, defect prediction, software testing, and app store analytics. She has co-authored more than 70 publications in premier venues including ICSE, FSE, TSE, and TOSEM, garnering over 7,450 citations, an h-index of 44, and i10-index of 118. Key publications include "Multi-objective software effort estimation" (ICSE 2016), "A survey of app store analysis for software engineering" (TSE 2017), and "Customer rating reactions can be predicted purely using app features" (RE 2018).

Sarro has secured major funding as manager and Co-PI of the €2.16 million ERC Starting Grant EPIC and as lead researcher for the predictive modelling theme of the £6.8 million EPSRC Programme Grant DAASE. Her achievements include the ACM Distinguished Paper Award at FSE 2019, GECCO HUMIES gold medal for human-competitive results in multi-objective effort estimation, ACM Distinguished Reviewer Award at ICSE 2018, and the 2023 David Lorge Parnas Fellowship. She holds prominent roles such as Chair of the IEEE Technical Community on Software Engineering, Chair of the SSBSE Steering Committee since 2017, and steering committee member for ICPC and ESEM. She has been Program Chair for ICSME 2021, ESEM 2020, ICPC 2019, GECCO 2018, and SSBSE 2016; Track Chair for ICSE 2021 and FSE 2020; and Associate Editor for ACM TOSEM, Empirical Software Engineering, ACM TELO, IET Software, and IEEE Software blog. At UCL, she is Programme Director for the MSc in Computer Science, teaching courses on Compilers and Validation & Verification, and mentoring final-year projects.