Eduard Paul Enoiu, Senior Lecturer
ABOUT ME: I am a researcher and lecturer at Mälardalen University in Västerås, Sweden, primarily affiliated with the Software Testing Laboratory and the Formal Modelling and Analysis groups at the department of Networked and Embedded Systems. A native of Bucharest, I earned an Engineer's degree from Polytechnic University of Bucharest in 2009 and a PhD from Mälardalen University in 2016.
My research interests span software engineering and empirical research, especially how to test, maintain, evolve and assure high-quality industrial software systems. I teach automated testing and model-based testing at the masters and PhD levels as well as to industrial practitioners. Currently I am doing research on a diverse array of topics in software development, including the role of automatic test generation (where tests are intelligently and algorithmically created) in industrial practice; the use of model checking for engineering better systems; the nature of creating efficient and effective tests; the cognitive aspects of software testing.
SUPERVISION: If you are interested in doing a bachelor, master or PhD thesis at Mälardalen University, and if you are a good and ambitious student interested in software engineering, embedded system development and software testing, then have a look on some general topics listed below (these topics are not taken by any student). If you are interested in any of these please email me.
I advise bachelor and master’s theses in all areas that I actively conduct research in:
Software Testing, with a particular focus on test design and benchmarking of tests.
Embedded Systems, particularly the development of industrial control and safety-critical software.
Model Checking and Model-Based Testing, particularly the use of models (e.g., timed automata) for building better systems.
Human aspects of Software Engineering, particularly cognitive aspects of software development.
Engineering Digital Systems and Circuits, especially using Verilog and other HDL architectures, and particularly how they relate to testing.
PODCAST: Listen to my podcast on software engineering called Testing Habits. These are conversations about software testing and software engineering.
Cognitive Aspects of Test Design
Software testing is a complex, intellectual activity based (at least) on analysis, reasoning, decision making, abstraction and collaboration performed in a highly demanding environment. Naturally, it uses and allocates multiple cognitive resources in software testers. However, while a cognitive psychology perspective is increasingly used in the general software engineering literature, it has yet to find its place in software testing. To the best of our knowledge, no theory of software testers’ cognitive processes exists. We took the first steps towards such a theory by presenting a cognitive model of software testing based on how problem solving is conceptualized in cognitive psychology. The results support a problem solving-based model of test design for capturing testers’ cognitive processes that could help in improving test design practices and tools supporting these activities.
Automatic Test Generation
Since the early days of software testing, automatic test generation has been suggested as a way of allowing tests to be created at a lower cost. However, industrially useful and applicable tools for automatic test generation are still scarce. As a consequence, the evidence regarding the applicability or feasibility of automatic test generation in industrial practice is limited. This is especially problematic if we consider the use of automatic test generation for industrial safety-critical control systems, such as are found in power plants, airplanes, or trains.
Our results show that there are still challenges associated with the use of automatic test generation. In particular, we found that while automatically generated tests, based on code coverage or mutation, can exercise the logic of the software as well as tests written manually, and can do so in a fraction of the time, they do not show better fault detection compared to manually created tests. Our results highlight the need for improving the goals used by automatic test generation tools.
Combinatorial Testing
Combination test generation techniques are test generation methods where tests are created by combining the input values of the software based on a certain combinatorial strategy. Our results show that these techniques can be improved and be successfully used in industrial practice. We proposed the use of timed base-choice criterion for testing industrial control software.
The idea of using combinatorial testing in software testing practice stands as a significant progress in the development of automatic test generation approaches. Combinatorial testing is capable of aiding an engineer in testing of industrial software.
Model-Based Analysis and Verification
Design models that can be introduced earlier in the development process provide a holistic system description that captures the structure and functionality of a software system, as well as related extra-functional information, e.g., timing properties and resource annotations. I was the coauthor of several studies that proposed efficient verification techniques, like model-checking, can be applied on high-level design artifacts to provide early information on the design and implementation of embedded software systems.
Automated Reuse Recommendation of Product Line Assets based on Natural Language Requirements (Dec 2020) Muhammad Abbas, Mehrdad Saadatmand, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Daniel Sundmark, Claes Lindskog The 19th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse (ICSR2020)
Towards a Model of Testers' Cognitive Processes: Software Testing as a Problem Solving Approach (Nov 2020) Eduard Paul Enoiu, Gerald Tukseferi , Robert Feldt IEEE International Workshop on Human and Social Aspects of Software Quality (HASQ 2020)
Probabilistic Mission Planning and Analysis for Multi-agent Systems (Oct 2020) Rong Gu, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Cristina Seceleanu, Kristina Lundqvist 9th International Symposium On Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation (ISoLA 2020)
Product Line Adoption in Industry: An Experience Report from the Railway Domain (Oct 2020) Muhammad Abbas, Robbert Jongeling, Claes Lindskog , Eduard Paul Enoiu, Mehrdad Saadatmand, Daniel Sundmark 24th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2020)
Agent-Based Software Testing: A Definition and Systematic Mapping Study (Oct 2020) Pavithra Perumal Kumaresen , Mirgita Frasheri , Eduard Paul Enoiu IEEE International Workshop on Automated and Intelligent Software Testing (AIST 2020)
Verifiable and Scalable Mission-Plan Synthesis for Multiple Autonomous Agents (Sep 2020) Rong Gu, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Cristina Seceleanu, Kristina Lundqvist 25TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FORMAL METHODS FOR INDUSTRIAL CRITICAL SYSTEMS (FMICS)
Daniel Flemström
Henrik Gustavsson
Jean Malm
Muhammad Abbas
Muhammad Nouman Zafar
Rong Gu