From the Director

Welcome to ISR

Welcome to the Institute for Software Research (ISR) at the University of California, Irvine.  ISR is a Center in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. Our goal is to advance software and information technology through research partnerships. Here at ISR, we have become the intersection between cutting edge software research and real world practice.

Over the years we have built an impressive community of academic software researchers and industrial innovators.  ISR offers a range of opportunities for participation and engagement. We invite you to join us as we continue to transform the field of Software Engineering.

Director Prof. Sam Malek

Featured Project

Calico - Software Design Sketching

A sketch-based distributed software design tool that supports software designers with a variety of features that improve over the use of just pen-and-paper or a regular whiteboard, and are tailored specifically for early software design on tablets and electronic whiteboards.

ISR Announcements

Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award in Software Engineering Established

Prof. Richard N. TaylorThe UCI Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) has announced the establishment of the Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award in Software Engineering. This is the first award in ICS specifically dedicated to software engineering.

Nov 02, 2018
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News Briefs

  • 2025 ICSE Conference Papers - The 47th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), the flagship conference in the field, takes place in April. Similar to previous years, faculty from UC Irvine’s Software Engineering program are contributing a variety of research papers and organizing roles, panels, and reviews.

  • 2025 CHI Conference Papers - Every year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) holds the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference, the premier international conference in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. The 2025 conference will take place in Yokohama, Japan, starting on April 26th. Informatics faculty Daniel Epstein served as Subcommittee Chair for Health, and Elena Agapie and Stephen Schueller served as Associate Chairs for Understanding People and Health.

  • Professor Iftekhar Ahmed is leading the ICSE 2020 US(Pacific) Regional Live! team. The Live! team will set up the infrastructure for live streaming the ICSE 2020 sessions in July, provide technical support, and coordinate among the virtual conference participants during the sessions to ensure the program runs smoothly. ISR Director professor Sam Malek, professor James A. Jones, and a group of ISR graduate students are serving as team members. The students include Sumaya Almanee (J. Garcia, advisor), Farima FarmahiniFarahani (C. Lopes, advisor), Fnu Jirigesi (I. Ahmed, advisor), Forough Mehralian (S. Malek, advisor), Navid Salehnamadi (S. Malek, advisor), and Maruf Zaber (C. Lopes, advisor).

  • The paper titled “On the Relationship Between Design Discussions and Design Quality: A Case Study of Apache Projects” has been accepted to the Research track at ESEC/FSE 2020 to be held in November. The paper is authored by Ph.D. student Umme Ayda Mannan of Oregon State University, professor Iftekhar Ahmed, and professors Carlos Jensen and Anita Sarma of Oregon State University.

  • ISR Director professor Sam Malek, professor Iftekhar Ahmed, and professor Stacy Branham, Informatics, have been awarded a $75,000 School of ICS Exploration grant for their project titled “Toward Stemming Accessibility Issues in Software.”

  • Prof. Iftekhar Ahmed and Prof. André van der Hoek have been awarded a $75,000 School of ICS exploration grant to study “The Dark Side of Software Engineering: Stimulant Use among Software Professionals.” Prof. Eduardo Almeida of Federal University of Bahia, Brazil will collaborate with Ahmed and van der Hoek.