Amir Makhshari [CV]

SALT Lab | ECE Department | University of British Columbia (UBC)

Kaiser 3040

2332 Main Mall

Vancouver, BC, Canada

V6T 1Z4

I’m a recent MASc. graduate from the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at UBC. I’ve been a graduate Software Engineering (SE) Researcher at the Software Analysis and Testing (SALT) Lab, advised by Ali Mesbah from 2019. Previously, I’ve been an undergraduate SE reseacher under the supervision of Ahmad Barforoush. Also, I’ve been a Software Engineering Teaching Assistant at UBC CS Department for various courses such as Advanced Software Engineering, Software Engineering Projects, and Software Engineering Applied Industry Skills.

Software Development: I have ~2.5 years of Software Engineering experience as a full-stack/backend developer. I’m expert in Java, proficient with Javascript, and I have experience with C, PHP (Laravel), Python, Swift, Groovy, and Bash. I also have experience in front-end development with HTML/CSS, React, and React Native. I’m interested in developing backend services that can reliably scale and perform well under stress. I have a passion for designing decoupled extensible and scalable cloud-based backend services. I’m interested in utilizing message queuing techniques to improve backend scalability (RabitMQ), abstracting microservices for better decoupling of backend services (MuleSoft), using database caching techniques for faster data processing (Redis), and improving backend development productivity by developing robust internal error management, and event logging, and following coding conventions.

Software Engineering Research: My overall research goal is to characterize developers’ challenges, help them build bug-free and robust systems, and use Machine Learning to make their development more efficient. I’m interested in the analysis and characterization of Bugs in complex, cloud-based, and distributed systems such as IoT, and developing ML-based techniques to detect bugs. My research interests are Empirical Software Engineering, Software Analysis, Mining Software Repositories (MSR), and Applying Machine Learning on Source Code (ML4Code).

Recent Publication

  1. ICSE
    IoT bugs and development challenges
    Makhshari, Amir, and Mesbah, Ali
    In 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2021

Education

MASc. in Software Engineering - @UBC
2019-2021

  • GPA: 4.15/4
  • Thesis: Analysis and Characterization of Bugs and Development Challenges in IoT.
  • Supervisor: Ali Mesbah - Associate Professor at UBC.
  • UBC is ranked 1st in Canada/6th in the world in SE research based on CSRankings.
BASc. in Computer Engineering @AUT
2014-2019

  • GPA (last two years): 3.97/4
  • Thesis: Proposing a Testing Framework For Stress/Load Testing IoT Systems.
  • Supervisor: Ahmad Barforoush - Professor at AUT.
  • AUT is ranked 1st in Iran in CS/CE based on guide2research -- Ranked 1st in Iran and 48th in the world in innovation influence based on THE.

Honors and Awards

Vice-President of Social Relations- ECE Graduate Student Society at UBC
2021

  • Elected by ECE students as a member of Graduate Student Society.
UBC Graduate Fellowship
2019 & 2020

  • Granted by ECE department at UBC.
  • Contributed to IoT/SE research project funded by Intel.
Top 0.5% in M.Sc. National University Entrance Exam- IT
2018

  • Ranked 38 among more than 10,000 applicants in Information Technology (IT) exam.
Top 1% in M.Sc. National University Entrance Exam- CE
2018

  • Ranked 211 among more than 19,000 applicants in Computer Engineering (CE) exam.
Top 0.5% in BASc. National University Entrance Exam- Math & Eng.
2014

  • Ranked 552 among more than 222,000 applicants in Mathematics and Engineering exam.
Top 0.5% in BASc. National University Entrance Exam- Foreign Lang.
2014

  • Ranked 750 among more than 128,000 applicants in Foreign Languages exam.