Research Interests and Philosophy
My research group develops solutions for improving the quality of existing software. We currently focus on security and integrity of mobile and cloud-based software, as well as security, robustness, and fairness of AI systems. With the aim of identifying and solving problems of high practical importance, we often start from empirical work studying problems and then use the gathered information for developing effective automated solutions of practical use. Our work relies on program analysis, formal methods, ML, and empirical research. I am extremely grateful to have our research supported by NSERC, Mitacs, IBM, Samsung, and Huawei.
For more details on our reseach see the ReSeSS Research Lab page and my publications list.
Major Awards
| 2021 | Distinguished Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) |
| 2020 | Distinguished Artifact Award, IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) |
| 2018 | ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, ACM International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) |
| 2017 | ASE 2017 Distinguished Reviewer |
| 2017 | Keynote speaker at the Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Dvelopment (FOSD) |
| 2016 | EASST Award Nominee, International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE) |
| 2015 | ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) |
| 2014 | Facebook's Internet Defense Prize Nominee, USENIX Security Conference |
| 2014 | Keynote speaker at the SPLC Workshop on Reverse Variability Engineering (REVE) |
| 2013 | Best Paper Award, Software Product Line Conference (SPLC) |
| 2013 | Best Paper Award, Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR) |
| 2013 | Elected member-at-large of the IEEE CS Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE) |
| 2012 | IBM Research Scientific Achievement Award on Model Driven Development |
| 2012 | IBM Research Accomplishment on Contributions to Rational Systems Engineering |
| 2011 | IBM Invention Achievement Award for Creative Contributions to IBM Process |
| 2008 | IBM Invention Achievement Award for Creative Contributions to IBM Process |
| 2003 | IBM Research Division Award for Contribution to Rational Products |
Bio Blob
Julia Rubin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, Canada and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. Earlier, Julia spent almost 10 years in industry, working for IBM Research, where she was a research staff member and a research group manager.
Julia's research interests are in software engineering, program analysis, software security, and in reliability of software and AI systems. Her recent work in these areas won ACM Distinguished Paper Awards at ISSTA'18 and ASE'15, Best Paper Awards at SPLC'13 and CSMR'13, and was runner-up for Facebook's Internet Defense Prize at the USENIX Security Symposium'14 and the EASST Award at ETAPS'16.
Julia served on program committees of several major conferences in Software Engineering, such as ICSE, ASE, FSE, MODELS, and FASE. She co-chaired the program committees of SPLC'14, ECMFA'14, FASE'17, and will co-chair the program committee of ASE in 2022. Julia also served as a member-at-large of the TCSE Executive Committee from 2013 to 2016, and chaired the TCSE Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Award Committee.