Research
My research sits in software engineering, mostly in automated testing: how to get trustworthy test oracles, how to derive tests from models of safety-critical systems, and how to explore large configuration spaces. Most of it is collaborative work with colleagues in FBK's Software Engineering unit.
Automatically generated tests often encode what the code does rather than what it should do. This work asks large language models to infer intended behaviour from documentation and turn it into assertions, and measures when that actually helps.
@article{khandaker2026augmentest,
title = {AugmenTest: A tool for improving test quality through automatic assertion generation},
author = {Shaker Mahmud Khandaker and Fitsum Kifetew and Davide Prandi and Angelo Susi},
journal = {Science of Computer Programming},
year = {2026},
volume = {254},
pages = {103531},
publisher = {Elsevier},
doi = {10.1016/j.scico.2026.103531}
}@inproceedings{khandaker2025augmentest,
title = {AugmenTest: Enhancing Tests with LLM-Driven Oracles},
author = {Shaker Mahmud Khandaker and Fitsum Kifetew and Davide Prandi and Angelo Susi},
booktitle = {2025 IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), Naples, Italy},
year = {2025},
pages = {279--289},
publisher = {IEEE},
doi = {10.1109/ICST62969.2025.10988926}
}@mastersthesis{khandaker2023exploring,
title = {Exploring the Feasibility and Effectiveness of Large Language Models for Automated Test Oracle Generation in Software Testing},
author = {Shaker Mahmud Khandaker},
howpublished = {Master's thesis, M.Sc. in Data Science, University of Trento. Supervisors: Fitsum Meshesha Kifetew, Paolo Rota},
year = {2023}
}Deriving tests from models of system behaviour, applied to railway interlocking systems.
@inproceedings{cimatti2024model,
title = {Model-Based Testing of Railway Interlocking Systems},
author = {Alessandro Cimatti and Shaker Khandaker and Fitsum Kifetew and Lorenzo Leone and Davide Prandi and Giuseppe Scaglione and Angelo Susi and Orazio Turboli},
booktitle = {Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Application Areas (ISoLA 2024), Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
year = {2024},
pages = {112--126},
publisher = {Springer},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-75390-9_8}
}Using feature models to explore and interactively optimise the configuration space of complex systems.
@inproceedings{khandaker2026interactive,
title = {Interactive Optimization of System Configurations Using Feature Models},
author = {Shaker Mahmud Khandaker and Fitsum Meshesha Kifetew and Davide Prandi and Angelo Susi},
booktitle = {International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2026), Requirements Engineering track},
year = {2026}
}Earlier work on low-cost hardware: a refreshable braille display built from micro servos.
@inproceedings{rahman2018portable,
title = {A Portable Braille Refreshable Display Using Micro Servos},
author = {A M Muntasir Rahman and Shaker Mahmud Khandaker and Nasif Noor Saleheen and Tasnia Nobi Afee and Naba Afrin and Md. Ashraful Alam},
booktitle = {2018 Joint 7th International Conference on Informatics, Electronics & Vision (ICIEV) and 2nd International Conference on Imaging, Vision & Pattern Recognition (icIVPR)},
year = {2018},
pages = {212--217},
publisher = {IEEE},
doi = {10.1109/ICIEV.2018.8641028}
}