We’re pleased to announce that Maria Christakis has been appointed as a Program Committee Co-Chair of the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis 2028!

The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) is the leading international forum for research on software testing, program analysis, verification, debugging, and software reliability. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to present the latest advances in techniques, tools, and applications that improve the quality, security, and dependability of software systems.

Maria will share the Program Co-Chair position with Cristian Cadar, Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. As Program Committee Co-Chairs, they will lead the scientific program of ISSTA 2028, helping shape one of the most influential conferences in software engineering. Maria’s appointment reflects her outstanding contributions to software reliability, automated testing, and program analysis. Most recently, she was awarded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant and received an academic gift from the Sui Foundation to support research on the automated validation of blockchain software, with a particular focus on the Move toolchain.

Congratulations to Maria and Cristian on this outstanding achievement!

About Maria Christakis

Maria Christakis is a Professor and Head of the Research Unit Software Engineering at TU Wien Informatics. Her research focuses on automated testing, program analysis, software verification, and techniques for building more reliable software systems. Before joining TU Wien in 2022, she was a tenure-track faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany. She previously held positions at the University of Kent, Microsoft Research, and ETH Zurich, where she completed her PhD.

Christakis has received several competitive grants and distinctions, including an ERC Starting Grant, an ERC Proof of Concept Grant, an Ethereum Foundation Academic Grant, an Amazon Research Award, a Google Research Scholar Award, and a Facebook Faculty Research Award. She is also a member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and received the ACM-W Rising Star Award for her research contributions to computing.

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