Sonal Mahajan

Research Scientist

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science

University of Southern California
2012 - 2018

M.S. in Computer Science

San Francisco University
2010 - 2012

B.E. in Computer Science

University of Pune
2004 - 2008

About Me

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2018 under the advisement of Prof. William G. J. Halfond. My research interests span the areas of software engineering, program analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI). I have specific interest in using AI techniques to develop automated tools for improving the quality of software and the productivity of software teams.

I have been fortunate to receive several honors for my work, including the ACM Distinguished Paper Award at ISSTA 2017, IEEE Distinguished Paper Award at ICST 2018, IEEE Best Paper Award at ICST 2016, and Graduate Distinguished Achievement Award for academic performance in 2012. I was also a finalist for USC's PhD Achievement Award (2018) and ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (2019).

[Download Resume]

Experience Highlights

Research Engineer

Mar 2022 - Present
Uber Technologies Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

Developing novel static analysis tools to improve code quality and reliability

Research Scientist

Sep 2018 - Feb 2022
Fujitsu Research of America, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

Developed a novel technique for recommending repair code for fixing Java runtime exceptions via structural code search and pattern mining

Doctoral Researcher

Aug 2012 - Aug 2018
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Researched and developed a suite of AI-based techniques for the automated repair of UI problems in web applications, such as cross-browser issues and internationalization failures

Research Intern

May 2015 - Aug 2015
Fujitsu Research of America, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

Designed and implemented a Javascript library to enable seamless porting of native device PhoneGap features to desktop browsers for automatic test case generation

Publications

SapientML: Synthesizing Machine Learning Pipelines by Learning from Human-Written Solutions
Ripon Saha, Akira Ura, Sonal Mahajan, Chenguang Zhu, Linyi Li, Yang Hu, Hiroaki Yoshida, Sarfraz Khurshid, Mukul R. Prasad
ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022). May 2022. Acceptance rate: 26%
Providing Real-time Assistance for Repairing Runtime Exceptions using Stack Overflow Posts
Sonal Mahajan, Mukul R. Prasad
15th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation. Apr 2022. Acceptance rate: 25%
Recommending Stack Overflow Posts for Fixing Runtime Exceptions using Failure Scenario Matching [paper] [video]
Sonal Mahajan, Negarsadat Abolhassani, Mukul R. Prasad
ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE). Nov 2020. Acceptance rate: 28%
Effective Automated Repair of Internationalization Presentation Failures in Web Pages Using Style Similarity Clustering and Search-Based Techniques
Special Edition Invited Paper    
Sonal Mahajan, Abdulmajeed Alameer, Phil McMinn, William G. J. Halfond
Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability (STVR). Volume 2020
Automated Repair of Presentation Failures in Web Applications Using Search-based Techniques [thesis]
Sonal Mahajan
PhD thesis. University of Southern California. Aug 2018
Automated Repair of Mobile Friendly Problems in Web Pages [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, Negarsadat Abolhassani, Phil McMinn, William G. J. Halfond
40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). May 2018. Acceptance rate: 20%
Automated Repair of Internationalization Presentation Failures in Web Pages Using Style Similarity Clustering and Search-Based Techniques [paper]
Distinguished Paper Award
Sonal Mahajan, Abdulmajeed Alameer, Phil McMinn, William G. J. Halfond
11th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST). April 2018. Acceptance rate: 25%
Automated Repair of Layout Cross Browser Issues using Search-Based Techniques [paper]
Distinguished Paper Award
Sonal Mahajan, Abdulmajeed Alameer, Phil McMinn, William G. J. Halfond
26th International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). July 2017. Acceptance rate: 26%
XFix: An Automated Tool for the Repair of Layout Cross Browser Issues [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, Abdulmajeed Alameer, Phil McMinn, William G. J. Halfond
26th International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) -- Demo Track. July 2017
Detecting Display Energy Hotspots in Android Apps [paper]
Mian Wan, Yuchen Jin, Ding Li, Jiaping Gui, Sonal Mahajan, William G. J. Halfond
Software Testing, Verification and Reliability (STVR). Volume 27 2017
Detecting and Localizing Visual Inconsistencies in Web Applications [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, Krupa Benhur Gadde, Anjaneyulu Pasala, William G. J. Halfond
23rd Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC) -- Short Paper. Dec 2016. Acceptance rate: 29%
Detecting and Localizing Internationalization Presentation Failures in Web Applications [paper]
Best Paper Award
Abdulmajeed Alameer, Sonal Mahajan, William G. J. Halfond
9th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST). April 2016. Acceptance rate: 27%
Using Visual Symptoms for Debugging Presentation Failures in Web Applications [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, Bailan Li, Pooyan Behnamghader, William G. J. Halfond
9th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST). April 2016. Acceptance rate: 27%
Detection and Localization of HTML Presentation Failures Using Computer Vision-Based Techniques [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, William G. J. Halfond
8th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST). April 2015. Acceptance rate: 24%
WebSee: A Tool for Debugging HTML Presentation Failures [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, William G. J. Halfond
8th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) -- Tool Track. April 2015. Acceptance rate: 24%
Finding HTML Presentation Failures Using Image Comparison Techniques [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, William G. J. Halfond
29th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) -- New Ideas track. September 2014. Acceptance rate: 24%
Root Cause Analysis for HTML Presentation Failures Using Search-based Techniques [paper]
Sonal Mahajan, Bailan Li, William G. J. Halfond
7th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST). June 2014. Acceptance rate: 53%