Sven Apel
Sven Apel, Prof. Dr.
Professor of Computer Science
Chair of Software Engineering
Saarland Informatics Campus
Saarland University
Coordinates
Saarland University, Saarland Informatics Campus
Building E1.1, Room 2.11
66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
Phone: +49 681 302 57211
E-Mail:
Curriculum vitae, short bio, DBLP, Google Scholar, ACM, ORCiD, Twitter, Mastodon
News
Our work on developing the neuro-scientific foundations of program comprehension has been supported by an ERC Advanced Grant!
Our ICPC'12 Paper “Measuring Programming Experience” received the Most Influential Paper Award at ICPC'22!
Research

A key vision driving my research is to empower software engineering practice to enter an era of intensive automation. I develop and evaluate methods, tools, and theories for the construction of manageable, reliable, efficient, configurable, and evolvable software systems. In particular, I am interested in:

Software product lines and configurable systems
Domain-specific generation and optimization
Software analytics and intelligence
Empirical methods and the human factor in software engineering

I apply my research results routinely to real-world software systems and projects from different domains, in particular, data-intensive, operating, and high-performance computing systems, both from the open-source realm or in collaborations with partners from industry, such as Siemens AG, Bosch Austria, Airbus Helicopters, and Fraunhofer IESE.

Awards & Honors
ERC Advanced Grant “Brains On Code”
ASE Fellow
ICPC Most Influential Paper Award
for the ICPC'12 Paper “Measuring Programming Experience”
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award @ ICSE'21
SPLC Most Influential Paper Award
for the ICSE'08 Paper “Granularity in Software Product Lines”
ACM Distinguished Member
for Outstanding Scientific Contributions to Computing
Distinguished Reviewer Award @ ASE'18
Hugo Junkers Award for Research and Innovation,
awarded by the State of Saxony-Anhalt
Appointment to the Young Academy of Europe (5 years)
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award @ ICSE'15
Best Paper Award @ Modularity'15
Heisenberg Professorship of the German Research Foundation
Best Research Paper Award @ SPLC'11
Emmy-Noether Fellowship of the German Research Foundation
Award of the University of Magdeburg and the Karin-Witte Foundation
for the Best Doctoral Dissertation 2007
Software-Engineering Award of the Ernst-Denert Foundation
for the Best Doctoral Dissertation 2007
Award of the School of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg
for Outstanding Scientific Achievements 2006
ERC Advanced Grant
Grants & Projects
Brains On Code (ERC Advanced Grant, 2 500 000 Euro, 2022–2027)
CPEC (DFG, TRR 248, Principal Investigator, Projects C2 & E3, 2022–2026)
Congruence (DFG, 620 000 Euro, 2020–2023)
Pervolution (DFG, 520 000 Euro, 2017–2024)
ExaStencils (DFG, SPP 1648, 510 000 Euro, 2013–2018)
SafeSPL++ (DFG, Heisenberg Program, 660 000 Euro, 2013–2018)
Pythia (DFG, SPP 1593, 700 000 Euro, 2012–2017)
FeatureOpt (FFG, 100 000 Euro, 2015–2018)
SafeSPL (DFG, Emmy-Noether Program, 1 300 000 Euro, 2010–2015)
MapReduceFoundation (DFG, 160 000 Euro, 2011–2013)
FeatureFoundation (DFG, 320 000 Euro, 2009–2013)
Service
(complete list)
Editorial Boards:
Empirical Software Engineering, IEEE Software
Steering Committees:
ESEC/FSE, FOSD
Program Committees:
FSE'24, ICSE'24, ICPC'23
Selected Publications
(complete list)

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Tools
FeatureHouse: Language-Independent Feature Composition cppstats: Analyzing C Preprocessor Directives
JDime: Structured Merge of Software Versions SPL Conqueror: Performance Prediction of Software Variants
SPLverifier: Variability-Aware Model Checking TypeChef: Variability-Aware Static Analysis
FeatureVisu: Layout-Based Feature Clustering Codeface: Project Analysis and Dashboard Framework
FeatureIDE: Feature-Oriented Software Development Fuji: Feature-Oriented Programming in Java
CIDE: Virtual Separation of Concerns
Teaching & Students
Current, past, and future semesters
Advised Ph.D., Bachelor, Master, and Diploma theses
Pearls
My keynote at ICPE'21 is online available!
My talk at the Joint Lecture Series of Saarland Informatics Campus is available at YouTube.
My keynote at QAVS 2020 is available at YouTube.
I am among the 49 ACM Distinguished Members that were recognized in 2018 by the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions that have revolutionized how we live, work, and play.
Times Higher Education features our research on double-blind reviewing (see also the original article in Communications of the ACM).
Network Science Offers New Perspective on Developer Roles in Open Source Software @ IEEE Software blog.
My keynote at MODULARITY 2016 is available at YouTube.
Co.LABS Article: This Is Your Brain On Code, According To Functional MRI Imaging
Huffington Post Article: Chris Parnin summarizes our fMRI research: Scientists Begin Looking at Programmers' Brains: The Neuroscience of Programming. See also the discussion thread at Slashdot.
Tech Talk on Variability-Aware Analysis at GPCE'12
Interview on FOSD at Software Engineering Radio: Part 1 and Part 2
Links
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