I presented my thesis proposal work, “How should static analysis tools explain anomalies to developers?”, at the Foundations of Software Engineering Student Research Competition in Seattle, Washington. I was awarded second place in the competition. The abstract of the short paper follows:

Despite the advanced static analysis tools available within modern integrated development environments (IDEs) for detecting anomalies, the error messages these tools produce to describe these anomalies remain perplexing for developers to comprehend. This research postulates that tools can computationally expose their internal reasoning processes to generate assistive error explanations that more closely align with how developers explain errors to themselves. My work demonstrates that tools stand to significantly benefit if they incorporate explanation principles in their design.

The associated poster for the paper is also available.