Conference General Chair and ITM Associate Professor Daniel Port addressing conference attendees
From UH News.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty and students were front and center at an international conference, helping to shape the future of information technology, cybersecurity and more.
The 2025 Association for Computing Machinery/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2025) was held in Honolulu, September 28–October 3, as part of Empirical Software Engineering International Week. The conference brought together more than 100 leading researchers and practitioners from multiple countries in the field of software engineering. UH Mānoa stood out through exceptional faculty leadership, student involvement and research contributions.
Three faculty members held key leadership roles in organizing the conference: Department of Information Technology Management Associate Professor Daniel Port served as general chair of ESEM 2025, overseeing the event’s overall planning and execution; Department of Information Technology Management Professor Rick Kazman was finance chair; and Department of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) Assistant Professor Anthony Peruma was the student volunteer chair, managing a team of volunteers who supported the conference sessions and logistics. Additionally, ICS Assistant Professor Italo Santos assisted with local arrangements.
Beyond faculty leadership, UH Mānoa was represented by four graduate students from the ICS department—Derek Garcia, Kayla-Marie Torres, Carol Wong and Briana Lee—along with ICS Senior Academic Advisor Kenny Kaʻaiakamanu-Quibilan, who served as conference volunteers, helping ensure the event’s success, while gaining valuable professional experience and exposure to leading research in the field.
UH’s research presence was strong, with four papers presented at the conference authored by faculty and students from ICS, demonstrating the department’s growing contributions to cutting-edge software engineering research.
The papers covered a range of topics:
- “Exploring Large Language Models for Analyzing and Improving Method Names in Scientific Code” investigated how large language models can assist in automatically enhancing method naming practices in scientific codebases.
- “Identifier Name Similarities: An Exploratory Study” examined the extent and patterns of identifier similarities across software projects.
- “SIExVulTS: Sensitive Information Exposure Vulnerability Detection System using Transformer Models and Static Analysis” proposed a novel vulnerability detection system to identify and verify sensitive information exposure in Java applications.
- “Software Solutions for Newcomers Onboarding in Software Projects: A Systematic Literature Review” synthesized research on tools and methods to assist new contributors joining software projects.
“UH Mānoa’s prominent participation in this internationally recognized conference underscores its rising influence in the global empirical software engineering community,” Peruma said. “The combination of leadership, scholarship and student engagement reflects the university’s commitment to advancing software engineering education and research.”