Since March 2026, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, advised by Prof. Dr. Alberto Bacchelli. Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Kaiserslautern, Germany, advised by Prof. Dr. Rupak Majumdar.
We are currently hiring PhD students to join our team (starting from February 2027) for our recently-funded SNSF project “CoCoA: Correct, Complete, and Aligned Test Code Evolution”. Please contact me for more details and submit your application here.
Research Interests
My research work focuses on automatically ensuring and increasing the correctness (i.e., soundness and completeness/precision), consistency, and performance of various types of software systems, from program analysis tools (such as static analyzers, SMT solvers, and deductive verifiers) to large language models (LLMs).
Student Projects
I am happy to advise students for their Bachelor or Master theses, practical work, research projects, or internships.
Currently available projects:
- Issue2UnitTest: Automatically Generating Unit Tests from Issue Reports
- Strongest Postcondition Generation via Specification Partitioning
- Incorrectness Estimation in Automatically-generated Code
If you would prefer to work on a different topic, please contact me and we will define together a suitable project.
Education
- PhD in Computer Science: ETH Zürich, Switzerland, 2016 - 2022
- MSc. in Computer Science (European Master in Software Engineering): Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy and Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany, 2013 - 2015
- Thesis: Alternative Approaches for Quantitative State/Event Fault Trees Analysis
- Advisors: Prof. Dr. Barbara Russo, Prof. Dr. Peter Liggesmeyer, MSc. Michael Roth
- BSc. in Computer and Software Engineering (Major in Software Engineering): Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania, 2009 - 2013
- Thesis: Extensions of the phantm Analyzer to support Model Extraction from PHP Web Applications
- Advisor: Prof. Dr. Marius Minea
Publications
- Identifying Overly Restrictive Matching Patterns in SMT-based Program Verifiers (extended version), A. Bugariu, A. Ter-Gabrielyan, P. Müller, Formal Aspects of Computing (FAC), 2023
- Identifying Overly Restrictive Matching Patterns in SMT-based Program Verifiers, A. Bugariu, A. Ter-Gabrielyan, P. Müller, Formal Methods (FM), 2021
- Automatically Testing String Solvers, A. Bugariu, P. Müller, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2020
- Automatically Testing Implementations of Numerical Abstract Domains, A. Bugariu, V. Wüstholz, M. Christakis, P. Müller, Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2018
Service
- CAV’27, OOPSLA’27,’24, FSE’27, ICSE’27,’26, PLDI’26 SRC, ISSTA’26, FSE’26 IVR, ASE’26,’25, SOAP’24, ICSE’24 AEC, ECOOP’23 ERC, ECOOP’23 AEC, Fuzzing’22 AEC, PLDI’22 AEC, CAV’21 AEC, PLDI’21 AEC: PC member
- STTT’25, TOSEM’25,’24, TOSEM’22 Replicated Computational Results: Reviewer
- ETH Zürich Hiring Committee for Computer Science’21: Scientific staff representative
- PLDI’19, ECOOP/PLDI’17: Student volunteer
Events
- Dagstuhl Seminar 25061: Logic and Neural Networks
- 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum’21
- Virtual Heidelberg Laureate Forum’20
- Marktoberdorf Summer School’16: Dependable Software Systems Engineering
Teaching
- Software Construction, BSc. course, University of Zürich: Lecturer (AS’26)
- Effective Software Testing, MSc. course, University of Zürich: Invited lecturer (SS’26)
- Rigorous Software Engineering, BSc. course, ETH Zürich: Invited lecturer (SS’26, SS’24), Co-lecturer (SS’23), Teaching assistant (SS’20)
- Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming, MSc. course, ETH Zürich: Head teaching assistant (AS’21, AS’20), Teaching assistant (AS’19, AS’18, AS’17)
- Parallel Programming, BSc. course, ETH Zürich: Teaching assistant (SS’19)
- Research Topics in Software Engineering, MSc. seminar, ETH Zürich: Teaching assistant (AS’19, AS’17)
- Software Architecture and Engineering, BSc. course, ETH Zürich: Head teaching assistant (SS’18), Teaching assistant (SS’17)
- Informatik I, BSc. course, ETH Zürich: Teaching assistant (AS’16)
Advised Students
- L. Gattiker: Testing SMT Solvers via Abstraction, BSc. Thesis, University of Zürich (AS’26)
- R. Alhambra: Automatically Ensuring Naming Alignment in Large Language Models-generated Test Code, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’26)
- M. Rasolofo: LLM-Guided User Intent Formalization for Real World Python Projects, Internship, University of Zürich (AS’26)
- L. Niedhart: Large Language Model-Guided Complete Test Suite Generation, MSc. Thesis, University of Zürich (AS’26)
- H. Mehmood: Automatically Checking LLM-Generated Answers, MSc. Thesis, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (AS’24)
- S. Kühne: Automatically Explaining and Localizing Semantic Errors in SMT Solvers, MSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’24)
- R. van Doren: Alternative SMT Encodings for Congestion Control Algorithms, Practical Work, ETH Zürich (SS’24)
- S. Kühne: Automatically Testing Solvers for String and Regular Expressions Constraints, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’21)
- K. Thommen: Automatically Testing MAX-SMT Solvers, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’21)
- M. Hurmuz: Automatically Generating Java Benchmarks with Known Errors, MSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’21)
- O. Becker: Automatically Testing SMT Solvers, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’21)
- P. Strebel: Explaining Unsatisfiability Proofs through Examples, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (SS’21) (co-advised with Dr. Malte Schwerhoff)
- R. Sherif Abdelbar: Automated Checking of Implicit Assumptions on Textual Data, BSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (SS’18) (co-advised with Dr. Caterina Urban)
- M. Schumacher: Automated Generation of Data Quality Checks, MSc. Thesis, ETH Zürich (AS’17) (co-advised with Dr. Caterina Urban)