About SCOPE Labs

SCOPE Lab works on techniques for showing correctness of all program executions. We aims to develop foundational technologies for improving the reliability of software systems.

A core theme of our research is to reduce the effort needed by developers to ensure their software system works correctly. To reduce the “effort” we focus on building automated verification, debugging and synthesis techniques for the software implementation (code) and the software design (model). You can see an overview of our research work here.

We are part of the Software Engineering Research Center (SERC) within the Computer Science and Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).

SCOPE Lab is open to new students for the Fall 2025 semester, but will not be accepting new students in Spring 2025 as Dr. Sullivan will be on maternity leave.

• SCOPE lab is looking for students interested in either software engineering or programming language research.
• SCOPE lab is not currently looking for new students interested in AI/ML.

(Yes, our icon is Allison’s smiling cat because…. why not?)

Research Topics

• Automated Software Engineering: Test/Oracle Generation, Automated Bug Localization and Repair, Regression Testing, and Mutation Testing
• Formal Methods and Programming Languages: Model Based Testing, First-Order Logic, Program Synthesis, Model Checking and Symbolic Execution

News.

• August 2024: Our paper “Right or Wrong – Understanding How Users Write Software Models in Alloy” accepted into SEFM 2024. Congratulations Ana!
• June 2024: Our Seminar “Specification Engineering: Foundations for the Future of Software Development” has been accepted as a 5-day Dagstuhl Seminar. Allison will be an organizer along with Marsha Chechik, Eunsuk Kang, Shahar Maoz and Jan Oliver Ringert.
• June 2024: One paper “AlloyASG: Alloy Predicate Code Representation as a Compact Structurally Balanced Graph” accepted into MODELS 2024. Congratulations Augustus on his first first author publication!
• June 2024: One paper “Does Every Computer Scientist Need to Know Formal Methods?” published in Formal Aspects of Computing.
• May 2024: Congratulations Augustus on passing his comprehensive exam! He is officially a PhD candidate at UTA.
• April 2024: Congratulations Ana on passing her PhD Proposal!
• March 2024: Congratulations Augustus on his pre-print of AlloyASG: Alloy Predicate Code Representation as a Compact Structurally Balanced Graph.
• Feburary 2024: Congratulations Ana on her pre-print of Empirically Exploring How Novices Write Software Models in Alloy.
• Janurary 2024: One paper “ LLM4TDD: Best Practices for Test Driven Development Using Large Language Models” accepted into LLMCODE@ICSE 2024. Congratulations Sanyogita!
• December 2023: Congratulations Allison on receiving a NSF CAREER Award grant to work on integrating live programming practices into finite model finders with the aim to ease the burden of learning software modeling. Total: 525k
• December 2023: Congratulations Sanyogita on her pre-print of LLM4TDD: Best Practices for Test Driven Development Using Large Language Models.
• November 2023: Congratulations Augustus on his pre-print of Structural Balance of Complex Weighted Graphs and Multi-partite Consensus.
• November 2023: Congratulations Augustus on passing his diagnostic exam!
• July 2023: One paper “Crucible: Graphical Test Cases for Alloy Models” accepted into ISSRE 2023. Congratulations Adam!
• July 2023: One paper “Live Programming for Finite Model Finders” accepted into ASE NIER 2023.
• More: (Older News).