I'm a professor (Belgian terminology "hoogleraar") at the Software Languages Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Since academic year 2019-2020, I'm also the programme chair of our Bachelor in Computer Science.

Contact

Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel Faculteit WE - DINF - SOFT Pleinlaan 2 1050 Elsene BELGIUM Office: 10F747 Telephone: +32 2 629.34.92 Fax: +32 2 629.35.25 E-mail: coen.de.roover@vub.be LinkedIn: Coen De Roover Twitter: @CoenDeRoover

Research

The central theme of my research is the design of program analyses, and their application to problems in software quality:

• Static and dynamic analysis: slicing of WebAssembly, abstract reference counting, incremental and parallel abstract interpretation, full-stack and client-side JavaScript instrumentation
• Automated testing: resilience testing of distributed Akka applications, concolic testing of full-stack JavaScript applications, maintenance of Selenium test scripts
• Software maintenance and evolution: Scala test smell detection, querying object-oriented and aspect-oriented code, change queries, commit decomposition
• Software analytics, artificial intelligence for software engineering: design smell prediction, clustering library usage on StackOverflow, change pattern mining in commits, mining for patterns in Cobol, semantic version suggestion for Ansible role releases, automated tagging of libraries, search-based tier assignment
• Application security: WebAssembly information flow analysis, practice of backporting fixes in package dependency networks, technical lag and vulnerabilities in DockerHub images, security risks of compiling to WebAssembly

Current research projects:

Bugatti: Embedded Security Testing and Automation

Knowledge Transfer Research, VLAIO COOCK+, 2025-2028

Cracy: CRA Compliance (made easy)

Applied Research, EU Digital Europe grant agreement No 101190492, 2024-2027

CRPF: Cybersecurity Research Program Flanders

Strategic Basic Research, Programme Funding EWI, large consortium of PIs from KULeuven, UGent, IMEC, VUB, Responsible for research line on static and dynamic application security testing, 2024-2028

BaseCamp Zero: Towards Zero-Touch Testing

Strategic Basic Research Flanders, FWO SBO, additional PI: Serge Demeyer (Universiteit Antwerpen), 2022-2026

EcoPipe: Energy Consumption Optimization in Pipeline Architectures

Strategic Basic Research Brussels, Innoviris Joint R&D, with company Zensor, additional PI: Wolfgang De Meuter and Joeri De Koster (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), 2023-2025

APAX: Automated Posture Analysis that Scales

Strategic Basic Research Flanders, VLAIO CS ICON, with companies LSEC, Awingu, Ceeyu, Toreon, additional PI: Johan Loeckx (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), 2022-2024

My group has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles in the domain, and has been actively involved in collaborative research projects of a fundamental, strategic, or applied nature. Do reach out in case you are interested in a collaboration!

Looking for someone in particular? As of August 1st 2025, my group counts the following members:
Bram Vandenbogaerde, Cindy Wauters, Gilles Coremans, Laurent Christophe, Maarten Vandercammen, Noah Van Es, Ruben Opdebeeck, Sander Huyghebaert, Sarah Verbelen, Yunior Pacheco Correa, Mohammed Abdrrahim Lahmar

News

• Registration is open for the 4th Summer School on Security Testing and Verification (ST&V 2025), organised in Brussels!
• Our dataset paper E2EGit: A Dataset of End-to-End Web Tests in Open Source Projects won a MSR 2025 Distinguished Dataset Award!
  
• Registration is open for the 3rd Summer School on Security Testing and Verification (ST&V 2024), organised in Brussels!
• Our book "Software Ecosystems: Tooling and Analytics" (co-edited by Tom Mens, Anthony Cleve, and myself) has been published by Springer! The book is intended for researchers and practitioners interested in data mining, tooling, and empirical analysis of software ecosystems. The reader will appreciate chapters that cover a wide spectrum of social and technical aspects of software ecosystems, each including an overview of the state of the art.
• Honoured to be among the recipients of the ICSME 2023 Distinguished Reviewer award.
• From January 2023 onwards, we will investigate static analysis to support migration to event-driven and streaming-based architectures in the Innoviris-funded Joint R&D Project ECOPIPE: "Energy Consumption Optimization in Pipeline Architectures"!
• Our paper Summary-Based Compositional Analysis for Soft Contract Verification won the SCAM 2022 Best Artifact Award!
  
• From October 2022 onwards, we will investigate resilience testing and fault reproduction for cloud-native applications in the FWO-funded SBO project BaseCamp Zero: Towards Zero-touch Testing". Do get in touch in case you are interested in a post-doctoral position on the topic!
• Registration is open for the 1st Summer School on Security Testing and Verification, 20-21-22 September in Leuven (Belgium)! Software verification, dynamic and static security testing, ML for vulnerability detection, and more! Co-chaired with Bart Jacobs.
• Our paper Static Stack-Preserving Intra-Procedural Slicing of WebAssembly Binaries won an ICSE 2022 Best Artifact Award!
  
• Our paper Uncovering Library Features from API Usage on Stack Overflow won the IEEE Computer Society TCSE Distinguished Paper Award at the 29th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER22)!
• Grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Awingu, Toreon, Ceeyu, and LSec on fuzz and concolic testing in the "APAX - Automated Posture Analysis that Scales" CyberSecurity ICON project funded by VLAIO.
• Honoured to guide the development of the ELANET social entrepreneurship technical platform as a member of its technical committee.
• Excited to be Workshops Co-Chair of the 35th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2022). Please consider submitting a workshop proposal!
• Honoured to help the generative programming community as the newest member of the Steering Committee of the GPCE conference series! (2021-2026).
• Honoured to be among the recipients of the ICSME 2021 Distinguished Reviewer award.
• Honoured to have been re-elected to the Steering Committee of the Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) conference! (2021-2023, second term)
• Excited to serve as Program Chair of the 20th edition of the GPCE conference, welcoming all papers on generative programming!
• Honoured to be a recipient of the SCAM 2020 Distinguished Reviewer award.
• Looking forward to attend Dagstuhl seminar 20142 on "Resilient Software Configuration and Infrastructure Code Analysis" in March 2020!
• Honoured to be a recipient of the SCAM 2018 Distinguished Reviewer award.
• From January 2018 onwards, we will investigate large-scale software analytics ("Big Code") in the FWO/FNRS-funded EOS project SECO-ASSIST: "Automated Assistance for Developing Software in Ecosystems of the Future". Do get in touch should you be interested in a post-doctoral position on this topic!
• From January 2018 onwards, we will investigate pattern mining and matching algorithms for legacy source code in the Innoviris-funded TeamUp project INTiMALS: "Intelligent Modernisation Assistance for Legacy Software"!
• Excited to be Program Co-Chair of the Tool Demonstration track of ICSME 2018 conference!
• Honoured to have been elected to the Steering Committee of the Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) conference! (2017-2020, first term)
• The capacity building Workshop on Resource Mobilization that I gave at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT, Nairobi, Kenya) made university press headlines!
• Happy to co-chair the SPLASH 2017 doctoral symposium.
• Happy to serve as program co-chair of the 17th edition of the SCAM conference, welcoming all papers related to source code analysis and manipulation!
• Co-organizing the 1st International Workshop on Programming Technology for the Future Web (ProWeb17) in Brussels, co-located with the Programming 2017 conference.
• Honoured to be a recipient of the ICSME 2016 Distinguished Reviewer award.
• Will be a keynote speaker at the 28th Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL2016) on "Functional Programming in an Impure World: a Tool Builder' s Perspective".
• Our paper Automated Generalization and Refinement of Code Templates with Ekeko/X won the best tool paper award at the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER 2016)!
• Our paper Detecting Function Purity in JavaScript won the best paper award at the 15th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2015)!
• From January 2016 onwards, SOFT will investigate tierless programming for JavaScript in the IWT-funded T e arless project "Secure Coordination of Rich Internet Application Tiers" (promotors at SOFT: Elisa Gonzalez Boix and Coen De Roover).
• From September 2015 onwards, SOFT will investigate static and dynamic security analyses for JavaScript in the Innoviris-funded SeCLOUD project "Security-Driven Engineering of Cloud-based Applications" (promotors at SOFT: Elisa Gonzalez Boix and Coen De Roover).
• The Cha-Q project showcases its first results on "Change-Centric Quality Assurance" in an open tool demonstration event on February 24th, 2015.

Academic service

• 2026: PC member of the 27th International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI 2026), PC member of the Research Track of the 33rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2026) .
• 2025: Program Co-Chair of the 33rd International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2025), PC member of the Research Track of the 41st International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2025), PC member of the Research Track of the 32rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2025), Journal First Co-Chair of the 32rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2025), External examiner PhD Viva Seham Alharbi (York University, United Kingdom), Member PhD Jury Stefan Ramson (Universität Potsdam, Germany) .
• 2024: General Chair of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2024), Co-Chair of the 3rd Summer School on Security Testing and Verification (ST&V 2024), Organizing Co-Chair of the 1st Workshop on Security Testing for Complex Software Systems(SECUTE 2024), co-located with EASE 2024, Organizing Co-Chair of the 1st Software Lifecycle Management for Knowledge Graphs Workshop (SOFLIM4KG), co-located with ISWC 2024, Co-Chair of the Journal-First Track of the 28th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2024, Journal-First Track), PC member of the 23rd International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts & Experiences (GPCE 2024), PC member of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2024), PC member of the Emerging Researchers' Forum (ERF) at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt (ERF at TechDebt 2024), PC member of the Research Track of the 31st International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2024), PC member of the Research Track of the 40th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2024), PC member of the Research track of the 2024 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming24), PC member of the 23rd Belgium-Netherlands Software Evolution Workshop (BENEVOL 2024), PC member of the 25th International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI24), Member PhD Jury (Opponent) of Idriss Riouak (Lund University, Sweden), Member PhD Jury of Xavier Chesterman (Artificial Intelligence Lab, VUB - Belgium), Member PhD Guidance Committee of Julien Liénard (UCLouvain, Belgium), Member PhD Jury of Mehdi Keshani (TUDelft, Netherlands), Member PhD Jury of Giovanni Rosa (University of Molise, Italy), Member PhD Jury of Florent Moriconi (EURECOM, SophiaTech, France), Member PhD Jury of Carlos Santiago Galindo Jiménez (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain) .
• 2023: PC member of the 22nd Belgium-Netherlands Software Evolution Workshop (BENEVOL 2023), General Co-Chair of the 22nd GPCE conference (GPCE23), Co-Chair of the 2nd Summer School on Security Testing and Verification, PC member of the 15th Seminar on Advanced Techniques & Tools for Software Evolution (SATToSE23), PC member of the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (Journal-First Track) (ASE23 Journal-First), PC member of the 39th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME23), PC member of the 22nd GPCE conference (GPCE23), PC member of the 30th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER23), PC member of the 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR23), Program Co-Chair of the Tool Demo track of the 39th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME23), Program Co-Chair of the Early Research Achievements track of the 31st International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC23), PC member of the 22nd Belgium-Netherlands Software Evolution Workshop (BENEVOL23), Member PhD Jury of Stefano Dalla Palma (Tilburg University, The Netherlands), Member PhD Jury of Águeda Gómez Cambronero (Universitat Jaume I, Spain) .
• 2022: PC member of the 21th GPCE conference (GPCE2022), PC member of the 29th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER22), PC member of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC22), PC member of the Research track 2022 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming22), PC member of the Posters track at the 2022 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming22), PC member of the 20th International Conference on Software and System Reuse (ICSR22), PC member of the 38th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME22), Member of the Academic Panel for the ECOOP 2022 Doctoral Symposium, Workshops Co-Chair of ECOOP 2022, Co-Organiser of the 2022 Program Analysis for WebAssembly (PAW) workshop, Co-Chair of the 1st Summer School on Security Testing and Verification, Member PhD Jury of Sam Van Den Vonder (Software Languages Lab, VUB), Member PhD Jury of Nicolas Harrand (Software Languages Lab, KTH Royal Institute of Sweden, Stockholm), Member PhD Jury of Oleksandr Zaitsev (University of Lille, France) .
• 2021: Program Chair of the 20th GPCE conference (GPCE2021), PC member of the 36th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE21), PC member of the 37th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME21), PC member of the 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR21), PC member of the Reproducibility Studies and Negative Results (RENE) track of the 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER21), PC member of the 4th International Workshop on Software Health in Projects, Ecosystems and Communities (SoHEAL21), Member of the ICPC 2021 Most Influential Paper Award Selection Committee, PC Member of the 12th A-TEST workshop (A-TEST 2021).
• 2020: Member PhD Jury of Sofia Papadimitriou (Machine Learning Group,ULB + Artificial Intelligence Lab, VUB), PC member of the 35th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE20), PC member of the 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR20), PC member of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC20), PC member of the 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM20), PC member of the 2020 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming20), PC member of the 19th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse (ICSR20), Co-Chair of the ACM student Research Competition at the 2020 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming20), PC member of the Reproducibility Studies and Negative Results (RENE) track of the 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER20).
• 2019: PC member of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR19), PC member of the Reproducibility Studies and Negative Results (RENE) track of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER19), PC member of the 34th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE19), PC member of the Tools track of the 27th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC19), PC member of the 19th Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM19), PC member of the 1st workshop on Languages and Tools for Next Generation Testing (LANGETI19), Co-organizer of the 3rd International Workshop on Programming Technology for the Future Web (ProWeb19), Co-Chair of the Posters track of the 2019 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming19), Judge for the ACM student Research Competition at the 2019 International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming19), PC member of the Posters track of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE19), Member PhD Jury of Thierry Renaux (Software Languages Lab, VUB), Member PhD Jury of Güner Orhan (University of Twente), PC member of the 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Infrastructure and Configuration Code (SEConfig).
• 2018: Program Co-Chair of the Tool Demonstrations Track of the 34th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME18), PC member of the Tool Demonstrations Track of the 2018 of the International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC18), PC member of the Research Track of the 34th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME18), PC member of the 11th Transformation Tool Contest (TTC18), PC member of the 18th Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM18), PC member of the 18th SCAM conference (SCAM18), Engineering Papers Track, PC member of the 10th International Workshop on Context-oriented Programming (COP18), Co-organizer of the 2nd International Workshop on Programming Technology for the Future Web (ProWeb18), Judge for the ACM student Research Competition at the Programming 2018 conference, Member PhD Jury of Christoffer Quist Adamsen ( Aarhus University), Member PhD Jury of Jesse Zaman (Software Languages Lab, VUB), Member PhD Jury of Paul Van Eecke (Artificial Intelligence Lab, VUB), Member PhD Jury of Tetiana Yarygina (University of Bergen), Member Doctoral Monitoring Committee of Lucas Serrano (Sorbonne University).
• 2017: Program Co-Chair of the SPLASH 2017 doctoral symposium (SPLASH17), Steering Committee member of the SCAM conference, Program Co-Chair of the 17th Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM17), PC member of the 33nd ICSME conference (ICSME17), PC member of the 10th Transformation Tool Contest (TTC17), PC member of the 4th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2016), PC member of the 10th Seminar Series on Advanced Techniques & Tools for Software Evolution (SATTOSE17), PC member of the 16th BElgian-NEtherlands software eVOLution Ssymposium (BENEVOL17), Co-organizer of the 1st International Workshop on Programming Technology for the Future Web (ProWeb17), Member PhD Jury of Gustavo Santo (Université de Lille), Member PhD Jury of Gabriel Radanne (Université Paris-Diderot).
• 2016: Workshops Co-chair SANER16, PC member of the 32nd ICSME conference (ICSME16), Publications Chair of the 16th SCAM conference (SCAM16), PC member of the 16th SCAM conference, Engineering Track (SCAM16), PC member of the 9th Transformation Tool Contest (TTC16), PC member of the 8th International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming (COP16), PC member of the NIER and Tools track of VISSOFT16, Member of PhD Jury Kristof Van Moffaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Member of PhD Jury Kevin Van Vaerenbergh (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Member of PhD Jury Willem De Groef (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Member of PhD Jury Boris Spasojević (University of Bern), PC member of the SPLASH 2016 Doctoral Symposium.
• 2015: PC member of the NIER and Tools track of VISSOFT15, member of the scientific comittee of the 2015 GTSSE Summer School, PC member of the 15th SCAM Tool Demo Track (SCAM15), PC member of the 8th Transformation Tool Contest (TTC15), PC member of the 7th International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming (COP15), PC member of ICSMe15 Early Research Achievements track, Member of PhD Jury Dries Harnie (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• 2014: Program Co-chair of WCRE-CSMR14 Early Research Achievements track, PC member of ICPC14, PC member of ICSMe14 Early Research Achievements track, PC member of ICSMe14 Tool Demo track
• 2013: PC member of WCRE13 Research Tool Demonstration track, PC member of UCAmI13, PC member of WASDeTT13, PhD Jury Member Niels Jonckheere (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• 2012: PC Chair of SATToSE12, PC member of UCAmI12, PC member of MidSens12, PC member of Smalltalks12
• 2011: PC member of MidSens11, PC member of Smalltalks11