Dr Neil Walkinshaw
Department of Computer Science
Senior Lecturer in Testing
Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
Member of the Testing research group
N.Walkinshaw@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1968
+44 114 222 1968
Regent Court (DCS)
Full contact details
Dr Neil Walkinshaw
Department of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
Department of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
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Dr Neil Walkinshaw studied his Ph.D. (2002-2005) at the University of Strathclyde on the use of static analysis to support software inspections. He subsequently spent five years (2005-2010) as a postdoc at the University of Sheffield, working on state machine inference and software testing (an area in which he is still active).
This was followed by 8 years as a Lecturer then Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Leicester. He took up his current position as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield in 2018.
- Research interests
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Dr Walkinshaw's research and teaching focus is on software quality assurance. His research has a particular emphasis on “black-box” components - software units that lack documentation and cannot be scrutinised internally.
He specialises in applying Machine Learning and other data analysis algorithms to the specific activities of testing, reverse-engineering, and safety-case assessment.
- Publications
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Books
- Software Quality Assurance. Springer International Publishing.
- Software Quality Assurance - Consistency in the Face of Complexity and Change. Springer.
Journal articles
- Effectively Incorporating Expert Knowledge in Automated Software Remodularisation. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. View this article in WRRO
- Predicting postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) during cesarean delivery using the Leicester PPH Predict tool: a retrospective cohort study.. American Journal of Perinatology, 35(2), 163-169. View this article in WRRO
- Inferring extended finite state machine models from software executions. Empirical Software Engineering, 21(3), 811-853. View this article in WRRO
- Assessing and generating test sets in terms of behavioural adequacy. Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 25(8), 749-780. View this article in WRRO
- Automated comparison of state-based software models in terms of their language and structure. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 22(2).
- STAMINA: a competition to encourage the development and assessment of software model inference techniques.. Empirical Software Engineering, 18, 791-824.
- STAMINA: a competition to encourage the development and assessment of software model inference techniques. Empirical Software Engineering, 1-34.
- TAIC-PART 2009-Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques: Special Section Editorial. J SYST SOFTWARE, 83(12), 2367-2368.
- A framework for the competitive evaluation of model inference techniques. MIIT 2010 - Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Model Inference In Testing, Held in Conjunction with ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2010, 1-9.
- Incrementally discovering testable specifications from program executions. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 6286 LNCS, 272-289.
- Property-based testing - The ProTest project. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 6286 LNCS, 250-271.
- Improving dynamic software analysis by applying grammar inference principles. J SOFTW MAINT EVOL-R, 20(4), 269-290.
- Validation and discovery from computational biology models.. Biosystems, 93(1-2), 141-150.
- Balanced FSM generation for empirical studies. 2008 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW'08, 371-375.
Chapters
- Chapter 1 Reverse-Engineering Software Behavior (pp. 1-58).
- Reverse-Engineering Software Behavior, Advances in Computers (pp. 1-58). Elsevier
- Adapting Grammar Inference Techniques to Mine State Machines, Mining Software Specifications (pp. 59-83). CRC Press
Conference proceedings papers
- Motivating Adult Learners by Introducing Programming Concepts with Scratch. Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Software Engineering Education
- Improving Scratch Programming with CRC-Card Design. Proceedings of the 14th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education on - WiPSCE'19, 23 October 2019 - 25 October 2019.
- Are 20% of Files Responsible for 80% of Defects?. Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 11 October 2018 - 12 October 2018. View this article in WRRO
- Comparison of Search-Based Algorithms for Stress-Testing Integrated Circuits (pp 198-212)
- Testing Functional Black-Box Programs Without a Specification (pp 101-120)
- How Do Automatically Generated Unit Tests Influence Software Maintenance?. 2018 IEEE 11th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), 9 April 2018 - 13 April 2018.
- Uncertainty-Driven Black-Box Test Data Generation. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), 13 March 2017 - 17 March 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Uncertainty-Driven Black-Box Test Data Generation.. ICST (pp 253-263)
- Using Segment-Based Alignment to Extract Packet Structures from Network Traces. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS), 25 July 2017 - 29 July 2017.
- Inferring Computational State Machine Models from Program Executions. 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2 October 2016 - 7 October 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Data and Analysis Code for GP EFSM Inference. 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME), 2 October 2016 - 7 October 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Choreography-Based Analysis of Distributed Message Passing Programs. 2016 24th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing (PDP), 17 February 2016 - 19 February 2016.
- A Search Based Approach for Stress-Testing Integrated Circuits (pp 80-95)
- SEPIA: Search for Proofs Using Inferred Automata.. CADE, Vol. 9195 (pp 246-255)
- Visualising software as a particle system. 2015 IEEE 3rd Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT), 27 September 2015 - 28 September 2015.
- SEPIA: Search for Proofs Using Inferred Automata (pp 246-255)
- Black-Box Test Generation from Inferred Models. 2015 IEEE/ACM 4th International Workshop on Realizing Artificial Intelligence Synergies in Software Engineering, 17 May 2015 - 17 May 2015.
- An evidential reasoning approach for assessing confidence in safety evidence. 2015 IEEE 26th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), 2 November 2015 - 5 November 2015.
- Mining State-Based Models from Proof Corpora.. CICM, Vol. 8543 (pp 282-297)
- Quantifying Uncertainty in Safety Cases Using Evidential Reasoning (pp 413-418)
- Mining State-Based Models from Proof Corpora (pp 282-297)
- Establishing the Source Code Disruption Caused by Automated Remodularisation Tools. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, 29 September 2014 - 3 October 2014.
- Software analytics = sharing information. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering - PROMISE '13, 9 October 2013 - 9 October 2013.
- Using evidential reasoning to make qualified predictions of software quality. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering - PROMISE '13, 9 October 2013 - 9 October 2013.
- Inferring Extended Finite State Machine models from software executions. 2013 20th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE), 14 October 2013 - 17 October 2013.
- Model-based testing and model inference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7609 LNCS(PART 1) (pp 440-443)
- Behaviourally adequate software testing. Proceedings - IEEE 5th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, ICST 2012 (pp 300-309)
- Supervised software modularisation. IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, ICSM (pp 472-481)
- Assessing test adequacy for black-box systems without specifications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 7019 LNCS (pp 209-224)
- A multiobjective optimisation approach for the dynamic inference and refinement of agent-based model specifications. 2011 IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2011 (pp 2237-2244)
- The Practical Assessment of Test Sets with Inductive Inference Techniques. TESTING - PRACTICE AND RESEARCH TECHNIQUES, Vol. 6303 (pp 165-172)
- Using compression algorithms to support the comprehension of program traces. Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Dynamic Analysis, WODA 2010 (pp 8-13)
- Increasing Functional Coverage by Inductive Testing: A Case Study.. ICTSS, Vol. 6435 (pp 126-141)
- Superstate identification for state machines using search-based clustering.. GECCO (pp 1381-1388)
- A message from the programme chairs. TAIC PART 2009 - Testing: Academic and Industrial Conference - Practice and Research Techniques
- Computing the Structural Difference between State-Based Models.. WCRE (pp 177-186)
- Iterative Refinement of Reverse-Engineered Models by Model-Based Testing.. FM, Vol. 5850 (pp 305-320)
- Applying Testability Transformations to Achieve Structural Coverage of Erlang Programs. TESTING OF SOFTWARE AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 5826 (pp 81-96)
- Automated discovery of state transitions and their functions in source code. SOFTWARE TESTING VERIFICATION & RELIABILITY, Vol. 18(2) (pp 99-121)
- Inferring Finite-State Models with Temporal Constraints.. ASE (pp 248-257)
- Evaluation and Comparison of Inferred Regular Grammars. GRAMMATICAL INFERENCE: ALGORITHMS AND APPLICATIONS, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 5278 (pp 252-265)
- Feature Location and Extraction using Landmarks and Barriers.. ICSM (pp 54-63)
- Feature location and extraction using landmarks and barriers. 2007 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE (pp 274-283)
- A hybrid approach to modeling biological systems. MEMBRANE COMPUTING, Vol. 4860 (pp 138-159)
- Reverse engineering state machines by interactive grammar inference. 14TH WORKING CONFERENCE ON REVERSE ENGINEERING, PROCEEDINGS (pp 209-218)
- Identifying state transitions and their functions in source code. TAIC PART - Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice and Research Techniques, Proceedings (pp 49-58)
- Using Attribute Slicing to Refactor Large Classes.. Beyond Program Slicing, Vol. 05451
- Understanding object-oriented source code from the behavioural perspective. 13TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON PROGRAM COMPREHENSION, PROCEEDINGS (pp 215-224)
- The Java system dependence graph. THIRD IEEE INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SOURCE CODE ANALYSIS AND MANIPULATION - PROCEEDINGS (pp 55-64)
- Reasoning about Uncertainty in Empirical Results. Proceedings of the International Conference on Empirical Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2020) View this article in WRRO
- Improving Automated GUI Testing by Learning to Avoid Infeasible Tests. Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Conference On Artificial Intelligence Testing (AITest) View this article in WRRO
- Software Quality Assurance. Springer International Publishing.
- Professional activities
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Member of the Testing research group