Catching Bugs with Mutation Testing

Mutation testing realises the idea of injecting and observing the consequences of artificially seeded faults in given systems. The approach is powerful as it allows revealing real faults, identifying weaknesses, simulating the effects of failures, estimating systems robustness and performing controlled studies. Mutation testing has reached a maturity phase and gradually gains popularity both in academia and in industry. This talk will present the main concepts, will introduce the key advances and will discuss open challenges and future research directions around mutation testing.

Dr. Mike Papadakis is an Associate Professor at the Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg. His research interests include software testing, static analysis, prediction modelling and search-based software engineering. He is best known for his work on Mutation Testing for which he has been awarded IEEE TCSE Rising Star Award 2020. Overall, he has (co-)authored more than 100 publications in international peer-reviewed conferences and journals. His work has been supported by Facebook, FNR, CETREL (SIX group company), BGL (BNP Paribas) and PayPal.