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 not currently accepting new PhD students.

(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.

• October 2026: One REU project “A Formal Method Approach to Evaluate Gaussian Splatting Methods” got selected for support. Thank you COE@UTA.
• July 2026: One paper “Formula Completion Suggestions for Alloy Models with Selection Guidance” accepted into ASE 2026. Congratulations Mohammad!
• May 2026: The recap report from Dr. Sullivan’s Dagstuhl Seminar “Specification Engineering: Foundations for the Future of Software Development” is now available online.
• April 2026: Got an NSF REU supplement for Dr. Sullivan’s CAREER grant. Looking forward to continuing to work with Marcee and Luke this summer!
• March 2026: One paper “Towards Output Directed Debugging of Finite Model Finders” accepted into FSE’s Ideas, Visions, and Reflections track (FSE-IVR 2026). Congratulations Mohammad!
• March 2026: Congrats Andy on being selected for a CRA UR2PhD Summer REU!
• Janurary 2026: Happy to welcome undergrads Luke & Joel onto the map verification project and undergrads Andy & Mushtahir into the Spring 2026 CRA UR2PhD REU training course!
• October 2025: Our CRA REUs received additional supplements from UTA’s College of Engineering. Congrats Talia and Marcee!
• September 2025: Two REUs supported by CRA’s UR2PhD program. Congrats Talia and Marcee!
• September 2025: Congrats to Dr. Sullivan for making Arlington’s 40 under 40 class of 2025!
• September 2025: Dr. Sullivan organized/attended the Dagstuhl Seminar “Specification Engineering: Foundations for the Future of Software Development”.
• August 2025: Dr. Sullivan has received a NSF grant to work on building an interactive tool that aims to ease the burden of learning software modeling. Total: 400k
• April 2025: Congratulations to Dr. Sullivan for receiving the UTA College of Engineering “Outstanding Early Career Faculty” Award
• March 2025: Congratulations to Dr. Anahita Samadi on successfully defending her dissertation! She will start a Post-Doc at UT Southwestern in May with Dr. Florence Chiang.
• More: (Older News).