1st International Workshop on Explainable Automated Software Engineering

ExASE 2025

Exploring Theory, Adaptation, Needs, Challenges, and Ethics

Co-located with the

40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2025)

16-20 November

Seoul, South Korea

The Ex-ASE workshop aims to explore the intersection between explainability and automated software engineering. It invites researchers and practitioners to reflect on the theoretical foundations, practical applications, challenges, and ethical considerations involved in developing explainable approaches to software automation.

We welcome contributions that address the following topics:

  • Explainability in requirements engineering, traceability, and software design
  • Explanations for automated testing, static/dynamic analysis, and program repair
  • Human-in-the-loop explainability for automated development workflows
  • Context-aware and stakeholder-specific explanation generation
  • Tool support for explaining model-driven or AI-based automation
  • Evaluation methods and metrics for explanation quality and impact
  • Explainability in SE4AI and AI4SE approaches
  • Explanations in software-dependent domains: CPS, IoT, robotics, digital health
  • Legal, ethical, and societal aspects of software transparency and accountability
  • Case studies and applications of explainable automation in software engineering

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: August 18, 2025 → August 26, 2025 (AOE)
  • Acceptance notification: September 26, 2025
  • Revised version: October 5, 2025
  • Workshop: November 16-20, 2025

Submission

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. All submissions will be reviewed by at least two members of the Program Committee. Evaluation criteria include technical quality, relevance, clarity, and potential to spark discussion. EasyChair will be used to manage submissions and reviews. Submissions must follow the IEEE conference format: (\textbackslash documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran})

Submission Guidelines:

  • Full papers (up to 8 pages, including references): Presenting mature research, empirical results, or in-depth case studies.
  • Short Papers (up to 4 pages, including references): Early-stage work, novel ideas, or position papers intended to stimulate discussion.
  • Demonstration Papers (up to 4 pages, including references): Describing tools, frameworks, or systems. Submissions should include a brief demo description; accepted demos will be given live presentation slots.
  • Review process: Single-blind peer review
Submit Paper

Keynote Speaker

Zining Zhu headshot

Zining Zhu

Stevens Institute of Technology

Improving LLM reasoning with mechanistic interpretability insights

LLM-based agentic reasoning systems have been used in scenarios including software engineering, explanation, and problem-solving, among many others. Meanwhile, many improvement areas have also been identified, and we look forward to improving the reasoning capabilities. In recent years, mechanistic interpretability offers useful tools and inspirations. In this talk, I introduce some of our recent attempts to apply the tools and inspirations to improving LLM reasoning, and share some exciting preliminary findings along this avenue.

 
   
     

Accepted Papers

   
   
         
  • Paper Title 1 (Authors)
  • Paper Title 2 (Authors)
  • Paper Title 3 (Authors)
  • [... list will be updated upon acceptance ...]
Program Schedule

**Note:** The proceedings for all accepted papers will be included in the ASE 2025 conference proceedings, available online and indexed in the ACM/IEEE Digital Library. You can view the full workshop schedule via the ASE 2025 main website.

   
 

Proceedings

    All accepted papers will be included in the ASE 2025 conference proceedings. The proceedings will be made available online and indexed in the ACM/IEEE Digital Library.

Accepted Papers

Organization

Program Co-Chairs

Co-chair Mersedeh Sadeghi, University of Cologne, Germany
Co-chair Livia Lestingi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Co-chair Marjan Hosseini, University of Connecticut, USA
Co-chair Alireza Javadian Sabet, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Web Chairs

Ahana Ahana Biswas, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Livia Livia Lestingi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Steering Committee

Steering Member Matteo Camilli, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Steering Member Morgan Frank, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Steering Member Raffaela Mirandola, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, Germany
Steering Member Matteo Rossi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Steering Member Patrizia Scandurra, University of Bergamo, Italy
Steering Member Andreas Vogelsang, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Program Committee

  • Akhila Bairy – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
  • Andreas Vogelsang – University of Duisburg-Essen
  • Arezou Farzane – University of Pittsburgh
  • Bhiman Kumar Baghel – University of Pittsburgh
  • İbrahim Kök – Ankara University
  • Kurt Schneider – Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • Matteo Camilli – Politecnico di Milano
  • Matteo Rossi – Politecnico di Milano
  • Morgan Frank – University of Pittsburgh
  • Mostafa Karami – University of Connecticut
  • Nooshin Yousefzadeh – University of Florida
  • Patrick Ebel – ScaDS.AI, Leipzig University
  • Patrizia Scandurra – University of Bergamo
  • Raffaela Mirandola – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
  • Verena Klös – Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
  • Yixiao Li – Pennsylvania State University
  • Andrew Aquilina – University of Pittsburgh
  • Rr Nefriana – University of Pittsburgh
  • Nemanja Tomic – University of Pittsburgh