Dave Williams
Software Engineering PhD Candidate @ UCL
Hi, I'm Dave and I'm a second-year PhD candidate at University College London (UCL). My research is primarily focused on understanding the software developer experience in an Automated Software Engineering (ASE) landscape. I am working as a member of both the SOLAR and CREST research groups.
You can contact me at david.williams.22@ucl.ac.uk.
Resume Contact Google Scholar GitHub
Timeline
Working with Dr Serkan Kirbas as part of the DevX Insights team.
Supervised by Prof. Federica Sarro & Dr Sergey Mechtaev.
Managed by Prof. Federica Sarro
Worked on research involving Genetic Improvement (GI), Regression Test Selection (RTS), and Large Language Models (LLMs) for patch explainability.
Dissertation: "B-Assist: Using GitHub Suggested Changes to Integrate APR Fixes into the Code Review Process"
Supervised by Prof. Federica Sarro & Prof. Justyna Petke
*This dissertation was extended and published at ICSE 2024 as User-Centric Deployment of Automated Program Repair at Bloomberg
Dissertation: "Trustworth Post-Purchase Manufacturing Communication Platform using Blockchain"
Supervised by Prof. Liqun Chen & Prof. Ioana Boureanu (Carlson)
Publications
2026
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Empirical and Sustainability Aspects of Software Engineering
Research in the Era of Large Language Models: A Reflection
David Williams, Max Hort, Maria Kechagia, Aldeida Aleti, Justyna Petke, Federica Sarro
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2026 - New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER) Track
ArXiv PDF -
Comparing AI Coding Agents: A Task-Stratified Analysis of Pull
Request Acceptance
Giovanni Pinna, Jingzhi Gong, David Williams, Federica Sarro
International Mining Software Repositories Conference (MSR) 2026 - Mining Challenge Track
2025
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GA4GC: Greener Agent for Greener Code via Multi-Objective
Configuration Optimization
Jingzhi Gong, Yixin Bian, Luis de la Cal, Giovanni Pinna, Anisha Uteem, David Williams, Mar Zamorano, Karine Even-Mendoza, W. B. Langdon, Hector D. Menendez, Federica Sarro
Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (SSBSE) 2025 - Challenge Track
PDF -
HotCat: Green and Effective Feature Selection for HotFix Bug
Taxonomy
Luis de la Cal, Yazhuo Cao, Ayse Irmak Ercevik, Giovanni Pinna, Lukas Twist, David Williams, Karine Even-Mendoza, W. B. Langdon, Hector D. Menendez, Federica Sarro
Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (SSBSE) 2025 - Challenge Track
PDF
2024
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User-Centric Deployment of Automated Program Repair at
Bloomberg
David Williams, James Callan, Serkan Kirbas, Sergey Mechtaev, Justyna Petke, Thomas Prideaux-Ghee, Federica Sarro
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2024 - Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP) Track
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award
ACM ArXiv Talk Award PDF -
Speeding up Genetic Improvement with Regression Test
Selection
Giovanni Guizzo, David Williams, Mark Harman, Justyna Petke, Federica Sarro
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodologies (TOSEM)
ACM PDF
Service
Conferences, Journals & Workshops
- Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) - Reviewer
- COW69: MSR Mining Challenge Collaborative Jam Session - Principal Organiser
- MSR 2026 - Junior PC Member
- COW67: AI-powered Software Engineering - Organiser
- ISSTA/ECOOP 2024 - Student Volunteering
Academia
Mentoring
- One Bachelor's Dissertation (Research-Based)
- Two Master's Dissertations @ Bloomberg
- Summer Intern @ SOLAR Group
News
- 20/01/2026 - Comparing AI Coding Agents: A Task-Stratified Analysis of Pull Request Acceptance has been accepted for publication at the MSR 2026 Mining Challenge Track.
- 01/12/2025-02/12/2025 - I had the pleasure of hosting the COW69: MSR Mining Challenge Collaborative Jam Session!
- 01/12/2025 - Empirical and Sustainability Aspects of Software Engineering Research in the Era of Large Language Models: A Reflection has been accepted for publication in ICSE-NIER 2026!
- 26/11/2025 - I gave my first seminar talk: "How-To: SE Research with LLMs" (slides).
- 02/10/2025 - Two papers I co-authored have been accepted for publication at the SSBSE 2025 Challenge Track.
- 25/09/2025 - I had the pleasure of attending the Future Advanced Testing Technology Workshop (FATTW 2025) in Paris, France.
- 03/10/2024 - I started working as a visiting researcher at Bloomberg in London, UK.
- 20/09/2024 - I completed my first conference as a student volunteer at ISSTA/ECOOP 2024 in Vienna, Austria.
- 19/04/2024 - User-Centric Deployment of Automated Program Repair at Bloomberg received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award.
- 17/04/2024 - I gave my first talk presenting "User-Centric Deployment of Automated Program Repair at Bloomberg" (slides) at ICSE 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
- 14/03/2024 - Speeding up Genetic Improvement with Regression Test Selection has been accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM).
- 20/12/2023 - User-Centric Deployment of Automated Program Repair at Bloomberg has been accepted for publication in ICSE-SEIP 2024