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Yves Le Traon is full professor of Computer Science at University of Luxembourg, in the domain of software engineering, with a focus on software testing, software security, and data-intensive systems. 


He is currently vice-director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT center) and head of the SerVal group (SEcurity, Reasoning and VALidation), which is composed of around 25 researchers. 


He was head of the CSC Research Unit (Dept. of Computer Science) for the period of 2013-2016.


His research interests include (1) innovative testing, debugging and repair techniques, (2) mobile Android security using static code analysis, machine learning techniques and, (3) design of robust machine-learning based systems. His research is inspired from and applies to several industry partners (Fintech BGL BNP-Paribas and Paypal, Smartgrid - CREOS,  Industry 4.0 - Cebi).  


His achievements and visibility have been recently acknowledged by an international journal, JSS, ranking him among the top-15 most impactful experienced SE researchers in the past decade, worldwide.  Yves Le Traon is one of the recipients of the Facebook Testing and Verification 2019 - Research Award. 


He is also Director of Studies of the Master in Information System Security Management (MSSI) and co-founder of Datathings, a spin-off company of University of Luxembourg providing advanced AI software to perform scalable decision-making at runtime.


Yves Le Traon has been General Chair of major conferences in the domain, such as IEEE ICST 2013, IEEE ISSRE 2004, and Program Chair of IEEE QRS 2016. He serves at the editorial boards of internationally-known journals (STVR, SoSym, IEEE Transactions on Reliability) and is author of more than 200 publications in international peer-reviewed conferences and journals such as ISSTA, ICSE, TIFF, TIFS, TSE, PLDI and Usenix Security. 

In terms of education, he received his engineering degree and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the “Institut National Polytechnique”, Grenoble, France, in 1997. From 1998 to 2004, he was associate professor at the University of Rennes, France. He co-founded the Triskell INRIA team, which focused at that time on innovating design, modeling and testing techniques, such as Model-driven Engineering (MDE). From 2004 to 2006, he was an expert in MDE in the EXA team (Requirements Engineering and Applications) at “France Télécom R&D” company. In 2006, he became full professor at Telecom Bretagne (Ecole Nationale des Télécommunications de Bretagne) where he pioneered software testing techniques to find security flaws.

 Google Scholar Citations


You can get most of my papers published since 2013 here: https://wwwfr.uni.lu/recherche/fstm/dcs/membres/yves_le_traon

Key research interests

Machine learning systems, Software testing, Software Security, Validation and Verification, security testing, Model Based Testing, search-based Software Engineering (SBSE),  Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), Android security, malware detection and prevention, Android bytecode static analysis

Application domains:
Fintech, smartgrid, Industry 4.0, IoT.

News

best paper award KDD 2020 health day: KDD 2020  ‘Data-driven Simulation and Optimization for Covid-19 ExitStrategies

Coming soon: ICSME 2021


PhD Supervision conducted in Luxembourg

By default, I am the main supervisor of all theses below. For the exceptions, it is indicated.

Current doctoral supervision



1.  Anil Koyuncu (junior CORE RECOMMEND - started Dec. 2016). “Automated Software Debugging and Software Repair”.

2.  Nikolaos Antoniadis (CREOS partnership - started Jan. 2017). “DeepSearch: taming what-for analytics challenges using spatiotemporal predictive multi-objective exploration”.

3.  Renaud Rwemalika (BGL-Weicker foundation partnership - started Oct. 2017). “Automatic generation and maintenance of functional tests in agile environment”.

4.  Anshuman Bhadauria (BGL-Weicker foundation partnership - started Nov. 2017). “Machine learning for wealth management client segmentation”.

5.  Paul-Lou Benedick (Cebi partnership - started Oct. 2017). “Connectivity for the Industry 4.0”.

6.  Julien Polge (Cebi partnership - started Jan. 2018). “Security framework for the Industry 4.0”.

7.  Salah Ghamizi (Structural assistant position – January 2019). “Robustness improvement of neural networks through search-based algorithms”

8.  Ahmed Khanfir (FNR Bridges – TestFast – started July 2019) – “Software testing in a fast, clever and effective way”

9.  Guillaume Haben (Paypal partnership – started September 2019) – “Root cause analysis in Devops: the Paypal case”

10.   Martin Gubri (FNR CORE “STELLAR” – started September 2019) – “Functional testing of machine learning-based systems”



Supervised doctoral dissertations (past)       

1.  Niklas Kolbe (bIoTope H2020 project - Nov. 2016). “A Formal Approach to Ontology Recommendation for Enhanced Interoperability in Open IoT Ecosystems”. Defense June 15, 2020.

2.  Kui Liu (junior CORE AUTOFIX - Aug. 2016).  “Deep Pattern Mining for Program Repair”. Defense December 18, 2019. Assistant Prof at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China.

3.  Ludovic Mouline (POST partnership - started Nov. 2015). “Towards a Modelling Framework with Temporal and Uncertain Data for Adaptive Systems”. Co-tutelle with IRISA, Rennes, Prof.Olivier Barais. Defense November 30, 2019. Research associate at SnT.

4.  Thierry Titcheu Chekam (FNR AFR) – “Assessment and Improvement of the Practical Use of Mutation for Automated Software Testing” – defense September 2019.- Research associate at SnT.

5.  Médéric Hurier (Assistant) – “Creating better ground truth to further understand Android malware”. Defense July 2019. Data scientist at SFEIR, Luxembourg.

6.  Steve Muller (FNR AFR PPP) – “Risk Monitoring and Intrusion Detection for Industrial Control Systems”. Defense June 2018- Now at Ministry of Economy, Luxembourg.

7.  Matthieu Jimenez (Assistant - started Oct. 2014). “Evaluating Vulnerability Prediction Models”. Defense Oct. 2018. Now engineer in the DataThings start-up company

8.  Alejandro Sanchez Guinea (POST partnership - started Sept. 2014). “Engineering Smart Software Services for Intelligent Pervasive Systems”. Defense August 2018. Postdoc at TU Darmstadt.

9.  Steve Muller (AFR PPP PhD – Itrust company). “Risk Monitoring and Intrusion Detection for Industrial Control Systems”, employee at the Ministry of Economy – Luxembourg.

10.   Daoyuan Li (Paul Wurth partnership – started 2014) “Transforming Time Series for Efficient and Accurate Classification”. Defense January 2018. Associate Director at Finquest

11.   Li Li (FNR CORE Andromap – started 2013). “Boosting Static Security Analysis of Android Apps through Code Instrumentation”. Defense November 2016. Assistant Professor at Monash University – 1500+ citations, h-index 18.

12.   Thomas Hartmann (REASON AFR - CREOS - started 2013). “Enabling model-driven live analytics for cyber-physical systems: The case of smart girds”. Defense November 2016- co-fonder of DataThings start-up company

13.   Jabier Martinez (AFR – started 2013). “Mining Software Artefact Variants for Product Line Migration and Analysis”. Defense October 2016. Associate prof at Tecnalia.

14.   Assaad Moawad (FNR CORE CoPains – started 2011). “Towards Ambient Intelligent Applications using Models@run.time and Machine Learning for Context-Aweness”. Defense January 2016. Manager of DataThings, SnT spin-off company.

15.   Kevin Allix  (Assistant). “Challenges and Outlook in Machine Learning-based Malware Detection for Android”. Defense October 2015. Research associate at SnT.

16.   Phu Nguyen (CORE project MITER - started 2011). “Model-Driven Security With Modularity and Reusability For Engineering Secure Software Systems”. Defense September 2015. Research Scientist at SINTEF Digital. 

17.   Christopher Hénard (CETREL-Six partnership). “Enabling testing of large scale highly configurable systems with search-based software engineering: the case of model-based software product lines”. Defense May 2015. Engineer at Talwalker – 1000+ citations, H-index 14+.

18.   Donia El Kateb (assistant). “Balancing non-functional requirements in cloud-based software: An approach based on security-aware design and multi-objective software dynamic management”. Defense January 2015. IT Security Engineer | Senior Information Security Officer - European Investment Bank (EIB).

19.   Alexandre Bartel (AFR funding). “Security Analysis of Permission-Based Systems using Static Analysis: An Application to the Android Stack”. Defense September 2014. Research Associate SnT - 2000+ citations, h-Index 13.

20.   Jorge Meira (CORE project TOOM). “Model-based Stress Testing for Database Systems”. Defense December 2014. Co-tutelle with UFPR, Brazil. Research Associate at SnT.

Past PhD supervisions

  1. Erwan Abgrall – “An Empirical Study of Browsers' Evolution Impact on Security & Privacy” (Defense: sept. 2014) – cotutelle with Telecom Bretagne. 
  2. Thomas Demongeot  – "Politique de contrôle de flux d’information définie par les utilisateurs pour les orchestrations de services : Mise en œuvre dans un orchestrateur BPEL” (Defense dec. 2013)
  3. Tejeddine Mouelhi – "Security and testing : security fault models formalization, definition of test criteria and test generation algorithms" (Defense 2010)
  4. Vincent Féru  – "Identification, formalization and integration of urbanisation patterns (enterprise architecture) for telecom architectures : Application to the QoS and Security of telecommunication networks " - thesis financed by France Télécom R&D
  5. Romain Delamare – « Testing functional and extra-functional aspects for component-based systems », (Defense: 2009)
  6. Erwan Brottier – « Using Model-driven engineering to check consistency of operational requirements » – thesis financed by France Télécom R&D (Defense: 2009) 
  7. Jean-Marie Mottu – « Validation in the context of model-driven engineering » (Defense: 2008)
  8. Marouane Himdi – « Component-based systems : functional and extra-functional diagnosis using probe injection » – thesis financed by Kereval company  (Defense: 2007)
  9. Franck Fleurey – « language and method for reliable model-driven engineering » (Defense: 2006)
  10. Clémentine Nebut – « Automated test generation from requirement : application to software product-lines » (Defense: 2004)
  11. Benoit Baudry– “ Testable assembling and validation of software components » (Defense: 2003)
  12. Vu Le Hanh – “ Test and UML models : integration testing and planning » (Defense: 2002)