Biographical Sketch

Sebastiano Panichella was born in Isernia (Italy). To know more about Italy, see the following slides.

He received (cum laude) the Laurea in Computer Science from the University of Salerno (Italy) in 2010 defending a thesis on IR-based Traceability Recovery. He received the PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sannio (Department of Engineering) in 2014 defending the thesis entitled ''Supporting Newcomers in Open Source Software Development Projects'' (PDF).
During his bachelor, master and doctoral studies, he had the opportunity to explore a wide range of research topics in Software Engineering (SE) such as IR-based Traceability Recovery, Mining Software Repositories (MSR), Software maintenance and evolution and Empirical Software Engineering. During the experience as postdoc in the SEAL group he investigated further SE research fields such as Mobile Computing, Continuous Delivery and Continuous integration.

Currently, His research interests are in the domain of Software Engineering (SE), cloud computing (CC), and Data Science (DS): DevOps (e.g., Continuous Delivery, Continuous integration), Machine learning applied to SE, Software maintenance and evolution (with particular focus on Cloud, mobile, AI-based, and Cyber-physical applications), Mobile Computing. Sebastiano Panichella is also deeply interested in interdisciplinary research, where computer science intersects with life sciences. His work bridges software engineering, AI/ML, and domain-specific expertise, creating impactful collaborations beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Moreover, he is promoting DS research on "Summarization Techniques for Code, Changes, and Testing". He authored or co-authored around one hundred papers appeared in International Conferences and Journals. These research works involved studies with industrial and open projects and received best paper awards or best paper nominations . Moreover, Sebastiano Panichella contribution to the education concern chapters of the book "Large Language Models in Cybersecurity and Cyberdefense: Novel Threats and Mitigations Perspectives" (with the chapters "Vulnerabilities Introduced by LLMs through Code Suggestions" and "Enhancing Security Awareness and Education for Large Language Models"). His research was funded in the past by National and International funding organizations. Prominent examples are:
- the H2020 project called COSMOS: DevOps for Complex Cyber-physical Systems (since 2021), - https://www.cosmos-devops.org/
- the Swiss National Science Foundation project called SURF-MobileAppsData The goal of the SURF-MobileAppsData (since 2021) - http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/seal/research/projects/SURF-MobileData.html
- the Innosuisse with the project called "ARIES: Exploiting User Journeys and Testing Automation for Supporting Efficient Energy Service Platforms" (since 2021) - https://spanichella.github.io/projects/aries-devops/index.html
His research is currently supported/funded by
- the Innosuisse - with an interdisciplinary project that brings together expertise in biopharmaceutical R&D, AI/ML technologies, and software engineering (from 2025-10-01) - see projects
- the Hasler Foundation with the project called "Advancing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Reliability and Societal Trust Through Integrated Testing and Formal Verification" (since 2025)
- the Swiss National Science Foundation with the project called "SwarmOps: Human-sensing based MLOps for Collaborative Cyber-physical systems" (since 2025)
- the Hasler Foundation with the project called "Bridging the Reality Gap in Testing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" (since 2024)
- the Horizon EU ("Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions-funded Doctoral Networks") with the project called InnoGuard: Hybrid and Generative Intelligence for Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (since 2024)

For more information have a look on his short CV or long CV.

He is a member of IEEE. He authored or co-authored one hundred (considering also demonstration, dataset and poster) papers appeared in International Conferences and Journals (26 of them published during the experience at the SEAL lab). In summary he published in high-ranked, peer-reviewed (according to the http://www.core.edu.au/conference-portal), and international venues (where he also received best and distinguished paper awards). These research works involved studies with industrial and open projects and received best paper awards or best paper nominations . He supervised (or co-supervised) 14 undergrad students, 24 MSc students and currently/recently 16 PhD students (6 of them during the postdoctoral experience at the University of Zurich) and 8 research assistants. He serves and has served as a program committee member of various international conference (e.g., ICSE, ASE, FSE, ICSME, etc.).
- Dr. Panichella was selected in 2019 as one of the top-20 (second in Switzerland) Most Active Early Stage Researchers Worldwide (results reported by the JSS journal) in SE.
- Dr. Panichella was selected In 2021 as one of the top-20 Most impactful SE researchers Worldwide (results reported by the JSS journal).
According to (the September 2022 data-update from) the article "A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field" (in the report), a ranking (or selection) of researchers is made (by the Stanford University) and Dr. Panichella appears in the percentile rank of the top 2% or above in the sub-field of Software engineering. Similarly, Dr. Panichella appears in the percentile rank of the top 2% or above in the sub-field for 2023
He is an Editorial Board Member of Journal of Software: evolution and process (JSEP) and the Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) journal. He is also Review Board member of the EMSE journal.