This award is given once a year and is one of the highest awards for software engineering given to pre-tenure faculty from the Association for Computing Machinery.
University of Central Florida assistant professor Kevin Moran has won the 2024 SIGSOFT Early Career Researcher Award “for outstanding contributions to improving the quality of mobile applications, through software testing, deep learning and user interface development. He received a $1,000 honorarium, a signed plaque with his name engraved and up to $3,000 in travel support to attend the International Conference on Software Engineering [in April].
“I am extremely honored to be recognized by the software engineering research community with this award. While the award goes to a single person, it is a testament to the hard work of the many students, collaborators and mentors that I have had the privilege of working with over the years. I could not be prouder of what we have accomplished, and I am excited to continue to push forward the field of software engineering,” Moran says.
This award is given once a year and is one of the highest awards for software engineering given to pre-tenure faculty from the Association for Computing Machinery. It was awarded to Moran for his outstanding research in understanding how engineers develop software and the challenges they face.
“The recent focus of my research lab (the SAGE Lab) is in using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques trained on open-source software systems to create new tools that help to automate the software development process.” Moran says. “While our focus has been on mobile applications, we have broad expertise across a range of software systems.”
Moran was one of 11 nominees for the early career award and was recognized by SIGSOFT in the past. In 2019 and 2020 he won distinguished paper awards and he has published over 40 papers on the topics of software engineering and computer security.
“This award showcases the caliber of the students and faculty at UCF, and in particular, the strong group of software engineering and cybersecurity researchers that we have built up,” Moran says, “UCF has become a premier university for computer science research more broadly, and awards like this are a great recognition of the strength of the Department of Computer Science and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.”
Researcher Credentials
Moran is currently an assistant professor for the Department of Computer Science and the Cyber Security and Privacy Research Cluster at UCF. He received his B.A in physics with a minor in computer science from William and Mary, where he also received his Ph.D. in computer science. His research at the SAGE lab spans the topics of software engineering, security, maintenance, and evolution with a focus on mobile platforms. Additionally, he explores applications of machine learning to data mined from software repositories to build practical automated tools for developers.
Story by Brianna Jesionowski