University of New Brunswick, Canada
Dr. Francis Palma is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick. He is the Director of the SE+AI Research Lab and an affiliated member of the Analytics Everywhere Lab. His work focuses on advancing software engineering through empirical methods and the integration of artificial intelligence techniques.
Dr. Palma’s research addresses key challenges in software design, maintenance, and evolution, with a strong emphasis on improving software quality and development processes. His interdisciplinary approach combines traditional software engineering with machine learning to tackle complex real-world problems.
Dr. Francis Palma earned his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering (Software Engineering) from the University of Montreal, Canada, in 2015. His doctoral research, titled "Unifying Service-Oriented Technologies for the Specification and Detection of their Antipatterns", was awarded Best Thesis (2015) by the Department of Software Engineering and Computer Engineering, under the supervision of Dr. Naouel Moha and Dr. Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc.
He previously completed a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Computer Science (Software Technologies) at the University of Trento, Italy, in 2010, where his thesis, "Using Interactive Genetic Algorithm for Requirements Prioritization", was supervised by Dr. Paolo Tonella and Dr. Angelo Susi.
Dr. Palma obtained his Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Bangladesh, in 2005. His undergraduate thesis, "An Efficient Technique for Text Compression", was supervised by Dr. S. M. Kamruzzaman.