Professor Phil McMinn
PhD
School of Computer Science
Professor of Software Engineering
School PGR Lead
Head of the Testing research group
  
  
    
         p.mcminn@sheffield.ac.uk
    
          
          
        
      
    
  
  
      Regent Court (DCS)
  
Full contact details
        Professor Phil McMinn
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
          
      
  
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
 - 
    
Phil McMinn is a Professor of Software Engineering who specialises in software testing. He primarily works on developing automated techniques to assist software engineers in developing test suites that are effective at finding bugs and are efficient to maintain.
While he is well-known in the software testing field for his work in search-based automatic test data generation, his research has tackled a variety of problems including test flakiness, test oracles, and ensuring test quality through mutation analysis.
His work has been funded by Meta (Facebook), the EPSRC, and HEFCE. 
- Research interests
 - 
    
- Software testing
 - Search-based software engineering,
 - Test oracles
 - Test flakiness
 - Mutation analysis
 
 
- Publications
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Journal articles
- . Journal of Open Source Software, 10(113), 8757-8757.
 - . Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 35(2).
 - . Empirical Software Engineering, 28.
 - . ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 31(1).
 - . Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 31(4).
 - . Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 31(10-2).
 - . Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 30(6).
 - . IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 45(5), 427-463.
 - . IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 44(7), 613-630.
 - . Software Testing, Verification & Reliability, 28(4).
 - . ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology , 25(1).
 - . Theoretical Computer Science, 605, 1-20.
 - . IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 41(5), 507-525.
 - . Science of Computer Programming, 97(4), 405-425.
 - . Journal of Systems and Software, 103, 311-327.
 - . Journal of Systems and Software.
 - . Journal of Systems and Software.
 - . Information and Software Technology.
 - . Integr Biol (Camb), 4(1), 53-64.
 - . IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 38(2), 453-477.
 - . 2011 IEEE Fourth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, xiv-xiv.
 - . J SYST SOFTWARE, 83(12), 2379-2391.
 - . IEEE T SOFTWARE ENG, 36(2), 226-247.
 - . ACM T SOFTW ENG METH, 18(3).
 - . PLoS One, 3(5), e2129.
 - . Biosystems, 93(1-2), 141-150.
 - . Softw. Test. Verification Reliab., 18, 69-70.
 - . J R Soc Interface, 4(17), 1077-1092.
 - . SOFTW TEST VERIF REL, 16(3), 131-132.
 - Development and validation of an agent-based computational model of normal human keratinocytes organisation in vitro. European Cells and Materials, 11(SUPPL.2), 28.
 - . Evol Comput, 14(1), 41-64.
 - Search-based software test data generation: a survey. SOFTW TEST VERIF REL, 14(2), 105-156.
 
Book chapters
- , Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 19-34). Springer International Publishing
 - (pp. 1-59).
 - (pp. 320-344).
 
Conference proceedings
- . 2025 IEEE/ACM International Flaky Tests Workshop (FTW). Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 27 April 2025 - 27 April 2025.
 - . 2025 IEEE/ACM International Flaky Tests Workshop (FTW). Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 27 April 2025 - 27 April 2025.
 - . 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp 908-912). Flagstaff, AZ, USA, 6 October 2024 - 6 October 2024.
 - . 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp 312-324). Flagstaff, AZ, USA, 6 October 2024 - 6 October 2024.
 - . 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp 873-877). Flagstaff, AZ, USA, 6 October 2024 - 6 October 2024.
 - . 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp 587-598). Flagstaff, AZ, USA, 6 October 2024 - 6 October 2024.
 - . AST '24: Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automation of Software Test (AST 2024) (pp 171-181). Lisbon, Portugal, 15 April 2024 - 15 April 2024.
 - . ICSE '24: Proceedings of the 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering. New York, NY, United States, 14 April 2024 - 14 April 2024.
 - . 2023 IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) (pp 49-59). Dublin, Ireland, 16 April 2023 - 16 April 2023.
 - . 2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP) (pp 253-262), 22 May 2022 - 24 May 2022.
 - . ICSE-SEIP '22: Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (pp 253-262). Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, 21 May 2022 - 21 May 2022.
 - . Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automation of Software Test (pp 160-164)
 - . 2022 IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) (pp 140-150). Valencia, Spain, 4 April 2022 - 4 April 2022.
 - . Proceedings of 2022 IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) (pp 93-104). Valencia, Spain, 4 April 2022 - 4 April 2022.
 - Diagnosability, adequacy & size: How test suites impact autograding. Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp 861-870). Virtual / Maui, Hawaii, USA, 4 January 2022 - 4 January 2022.
 - . 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) (pp 60-65). Virtual conference, 25 May 2021 - 25 May 2021.
 - . Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp 1055-1061)
 - . Proceedings of 2020 IEEE 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) (pp 160-170). Adelaide, Australia, 28 September 2020 - 28 September 2020.
 - . Proceedings of 2020 IEEE 32nd Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T) (pp 105-114). Munich, Germany, 9 November 2020 - 9 November 2020.
 - . AST '20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 1st International Conference on Automation of Software Test (pp 41-50). Seoul, Republic of Korea, 7 October 2020 - 7 October 2020.
 - . Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops (pp 11-12)
 - . 2020 IEEE 13th International Conference on Software Testing, Validation and Verification (ICST) (pp 220-230). Porto, Portugal, 24 October 2020 - 24 October 2020.
 - . 2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (pp 437-448). Cleveland, OH, USA, 30 September 2019 - 4 October 2019.
 - . 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) (pp 121-125). Montreal, QC, Canada, 25 May 2019 - 25 May 2019.
 - . 2019 12th IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Validation and Verification (ICST). Xian, China, 22 April 2019 - 27 April 2019.
 - . Proceedings of 2019 12th IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Validation and Verification (ICST) (pp 183-193). Xi'an, China, 22 April 2019 - 22 April 2019.
 - . Proceedings of the 27th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp 266-275)
 - . 2018 IEEE 11th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) (pp 12-22). Västerås, Sweden, 9 April 2018 - 9 April 2018.
 - . Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2018) (pp 215-226). Västerås, Sweden, 9 April 2018 - 9 April 2018.
 - . Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp 140-150). Gothenburg, Sweden, 27 May 2018 - 27 May 2018.
 - . SSBSE 2017: Search Based Software Engineering (pp 143-149). Paderborn, Germany, 9 September 2017 - 9 September 2017.
 - . ISSTA 2017 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp 360-363). Santa Barbara, California, 10 July 2017 - 10 July 2017.
 - . ISSTA 2017 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp 368-371). Santa Barbara, California, 10 July 2017 - 10 July 2017.
 - . ISSTA 2017 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp 192-202). Santa Barbara, California, 10 July 2017 - 10 July 2017.
 - . ISSTA 2017 Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (pp 249-260). Santa Barbara, California, 10 July 2017 - 10 July 2017.
 - . 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp 207-209). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 20 May 2017 - 20 May 2017.
 - . 2016 International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
 - . 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
 - . Search Based Software Engineering, Vol. 9962. Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
 - . SBST '16 Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (pp 43-44). Austin, Texas (US), 16 May 2016 - 16 May 2016.
 - . AST '16 Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Automation of Software Test (pp 36-42), 14 May 2016 - 14 May 2016.
 - . SBST '16 Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (pp 55-56). Austin, Texas (US), 16 May 2016 - 16 May 2016.
 - . 2015 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) (pp 201-211), 9 November 2015 - 13 November 2015.
 - . 2015 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 9 November 2015 - 13 November 2015.
 - . ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Vol. 24(4)
 - . Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (pp 1367-1374)
 - . International Conferences on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 2015 (pp 352-357)
 - EXPOSE: Inferring worst-case time complexity by automatic empirical study. Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Seke, Vol. 2015-January (pp 730-731)
 - . 2014 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (pp 466-470), 29 September 2014 - 3 October 2014.
 - . 2014 14th International Conference on Quality Software (pp 57-66), 2 October 2014 - 3 October 2014.
 - Message from the chairs. 7th International Workshop on Search Based Software Testing Sbst 2014 Proceedings (pp iii)
 - Message from the chairs. 7th International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing, SBST 2014 - Proceedings (pp iii)
 - . Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, Vol. 7838 LNAI (pp 143-156)
 - . Proceedings IEEE 6th International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Icst 2013 (pp 31-40)
 - . Proceedings IEEE 6th International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshops Icstw 2013 (pp 63-72)
 - . Proceedings IEEE 6th International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshops Icstw 2013 (pp 396-399)
 - . Proceedings IEEE 6th International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Icst 2013 (pp 352-361)
 - . 2013 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis Issta 2013 Proceedings (pp 291-301)
 - . Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2013) (pp 1445-1452). Amsterdam, 6 July 2013 - 10 July 2013.
 - Test Suite Generation with Memetic Algorithms. GECCO'13: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2013 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (pp 1437-1444)
 - . IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance Icsm (pp 472-481)
 - . Proceedings International Conference on Quality Software (pp 79-88)
 - . Proceedings IEEE 5th International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Icst 2012 (pp 141-150)
 - . 2011 26th IEEE ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering Ase 2011 Proceedings (pp 53-62)
 - . Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, Vol. 6956 LNCS (pp V-VI)
 - . 2011 IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation CEC 2011 (pp 2237-2244)
 - . Proceedings 4th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshops Icstw 2011 (pp 153-163)
 - Investigation of qualitative human oracle costs.. PPIG (pp 8-8)
 - . Proceedings 2nd International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering Ssbse 2010 (pp 9-18)
 - . 1st International Workshop on Software Test Output Validation Stov 2010 in Conjunction with the 2010 International Conference on Software Testing and Analysis Issta 2010 (pp 1-4)
 - . Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Dynamic Analysis Woda 2010 (pp 8-13)
 - Superstate identification for state machines using search-based clustering.. GECCO (pp 1381-1388)
 - . Icstw 2010 3rd International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshops (pp 182-191)
 - . Icstw 2010 3rd International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshops (pp 151-156)
 - . Taic Part 2009 Testing Academic and Industrial Conference Practice and Research Techniques (pp 95-104)
 - . J SYST SOFTWARE, Vol. 82(11) (pp 1753-1754)
 - . Proceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Gecco 2009 (pp 1689-1696)
 - Co-testability Transformation. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, Vol. 8351
 - . Gecco 08 Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation 2008 (pp 1759-1766)
 - Co-testability Transformation. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, Vol. 8051
 - . 6th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering Esec Fse 2007 (pp 155-164)
 - A theoretical & empirical znalysis of evolutionary testing and hill climbing for structural test data generation.. ISSTA (pp 73-83)
 - . Proceedings of Gecco 2007 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (pp 1098-1105)
 - . Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis Issta 2006, Vol. 2006 (pp 13-23)
 - Evolutionary testing of state-based programs. GECCO 2005: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Vols 1 and 2 (pp 1013-1020)
 - Hybridizing evolutionary testing with the chaining approach. GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION GECCO 2004 , PT 2, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 3103 (pp 1363-1374)
 - The state problem for evolutionary testing. GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION - GECCO 2003, PT II, PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 2724 (pp 2488-2498)
 - Where tests fall short: empirically analyzing oracle gaps in covered code. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2025). Honolulu, Hawai, USA, 28 September 2025 - 28 September 2025.
 - Empirically evaluating the use of bytecode for diversity-based test case prioritisation. International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE). Istanbul, Turkey, 17 June 2025 - 17 June 2025.
 - . Proceedings of the International Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST 2018) (pp 57-63). New york, 28 May 2018 - 28 May 2018.
 
Preprints
- , arXiv.
 - , arXiv.
 - , arXiv.
 - , arXiv.
 - , arXiv.
 - , arXiv.
 
 
- Grants
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- Test FLARE: , EPSRC, 10/2023 - 02/2027, £544,227, as PI
 - RoarQ, RCUK, 05/2023 - 03/2026, £6,000, as PI
 - Flake-It: Search-Based Inducement and Repair of Latent Test Flakiness, Industrial, 01/2020 - 12/2026, £40,000, as PI
 - RE-PRESENT: , EPSRC, 04/2020 - 03/2023, £34,717, as PI
 - Insitute of Coding, HEFCE, 11/2017 - 03/2020, £957,000, as PI
 - , EPSRC, 03/2016 - 10/2018, £516,859, as Co-PI
 - , EPSRC, 04/2009 - 09/2012, £315,209, as Co-PI
 - Automated Discovery of Emergent Misbehaviour, EPSRC, 08/2009 - 07/2012, £241,737, as PI
 - RE-COST: Reducing the Cost of Oracles for Software Testing, EPSRC, 01/2011 - 01/2014, £302,580, as PI
 
 
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Member of the research group
 - SBST 2014 Chair
 - ICSE 2014 Review Committee member
 - ICSE 2013 Program Committee member
 - ISSTA 2012 Program Committee member
 - SSBSE 2011 General Chair
 - Best paper winner at SSBSE 2010