Luana Martins

Attending the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022) was my first in-person international conference as the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed how scientific conferences occurred in the last two-three years. Although the conference was held in-person, we must wear a mask to ensure the safety and well-being of the attendants. That’s why I am still wearing a mask in my photo!

Talking about the conference, ICSE 2022 was full of activities. I was amazed by the great effort of the ICSE community in preparing a conference with oral and poster presentations, keynote talks, birds of feathers sessions, mentoring sessions, and networking events in a hybrid format (virtual and in-person conference) for the first time.

During the virtual conference, I got to attend the Student Mentoring Workshop, where I met three mentors that are experts in my research area (Juergen Cito – TU Wien and Meta, Saba Alimadadi – Simon Fraser University, and Baishakhi Ray – Columbia University). Through the support given by ACM-W, I was able to attend the in-person conference in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where I met another mentor of my choice (Andy Zaidman – TU Delft). In both virtual and in-person conferences, I attended several presentations and listened to talks from distinguished professors, researchers, and practitioners on Software Testing and Machine Learning with/for Software Engineering. The feedback I received in the mentoring sessions aligned with the presentations and talks provided me with new insights and contributions to my research. I could understand the state-of-the-art ideas and learn more about the Machine Learning techniques that I aim to apply in my research. The mentors suggested points of improvement and discussed the outputs of my research project. As an immediate result, I have found potential collaborators to work with and plan to submit at least one paper to the ICSE 2023 technical track.

In addition, I also attended many networking events. The first one was a social event to meet other students during a very fun itinerary guided by Jonathan Bell (sponsored by CMU’s Institute for Software Research, and planned by Rohan Padhye) through Pittsburgh. Other events included the newcomers reception, where I met other ICSE first-time attendants through five-minute conversations and a karaoke session. So much fun!

I would like to thank ACM-W for giving me this valuable opportunity. I had the chance to share knowledge and cultural experiences with other researchers from around the world and strengthen my networking. It was a truly memorable experience and I look forward to more learning experiences in the future.