Joanna Cecilia da Silva Santos, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has received a Google Research Scholar Award for her project “Leveraging the Power of LLMs to Generate Security Tests for Mobile Apps.”
The project’s goal is to make mobile apps safer by using AI to catch security issues early.
“Right now, many app developers find it difficult to check if their mobile apps are secure because writing security tests can be complicated, time-consuming, and error-prone,“ said Santos. “Our project will use AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), to automatically create these security tests for them.”
Santos’ research focuses on engineering secure software systems. She addresses complex software engineering and security challenges through program analysis, software verification, and machine learning.
She joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2021 after receiving a Ph.D. at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She leads the Security and Software Engineering Research Lab (S2E).
Google’s Research Scholar Program supports research conducted by early-career professors at institutions around the world, particularly those exploring the ways technology affects individuals and society. The award comes with $60,000 in unrestricted funds to support research.
— Karla Cruise, Notre Dame Engineering; Photo by Wes Evard, Notre Dame Engineering