MUTATION 2021
The 16th International Workshop on Mutation Analysis
Co-located with ICST
April 12, 2021
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About Mutation 2021

Mutation is widely acknowledged as one of the most important techniques to assess the fault-revealing ability of tests. In recent years, mutation has gained popularity both in academia and research, with several companies and research projects attempting to incorporate mutation to the development life cycle. Mutation analysis has traditionally targeted the source code but has also been successfully applied to various artefacts at different levels of abstraction. Examples of such artefacts include: database schemas, finite state machines, various model notations, security policies, software product lines, etc. Mutation has also been employed to solve various research problems including the Test Oracle Problem, Fault Localisation and Debugging, Defect Prediction, etc. To this day, the mutation field continues to expand with an increasing trend of high quality publications.

Mutation 2021 is the 16th in the series of international workshops focusing on mutation analysis. The workshop will be co-located with the International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST 2021). Accepted papers will be published as part of the ICST proceedings.

The Mutation workshop aims to be the premier forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss recent advances in the area and propose new research directions. We invite submissions of both full-length and short-length research papers and especially encourage the submission of industry practice papers.


Call for Papers

Call for Papers

Mutation is widely acknowledged as one of the most important techniques to assess the quality of tests. In recent years, mutation has gained popularity both in academia and research, with several companies and research projects attempting to incorporate mutation to the development life cycle. Mutation analysis has traditionally targeted the source code but has also been successfully applied to various artefacts at different levels of abstraction. Examples of such artefacts include: database schemas, finite state machines, various model notations, security policies, software product lines, etc. Mutation has also been employed to solve various research problems including the Test Oracle Problem, Fault Localisation and Debugging, Defect Prediction, etc. To this day, the mutation field continues to expand with an increasing trend of high quality publications. The Mutation workshop aims to be the premier forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss recent advances in the area and propose new research directions. We invite submissions of both full-length and short-length research papers and especially encourage the submission of industry practice papers.

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Mutation-based test adequacy criteria (theoretical analyses and practical applications).
  • Mutation-based test data generation.
  • Higher order mutation testing.
  • Novel mutation testing paradigms and applications.
  • Novel solutions to mutation's problems.
  • Empirical studies using and/or evaluating mutation.
  • Theoretical analysis of mutation testing.
  • Mutation testing tools.
  • Industrial experience and application of mutation testing.
  • Mutation for mobile, internet, and cloud-based systems (QoS, power consumption, etc).
  • Mutation for non-functional properties, including security, reliability, performance, etc.
  • Mutation for artificial intelligence (e.g., data mutation, model mutation, mutation-based test data generation, etc.)

Types of Submissions

Three types of papers can be submitted to the workshop:

  • Full papers (10 pages): Research, case studies.
  • Short papers (6 pages): Research in progress, tools.
  • Industrial papers (6 pages): Applications and lessons learned in industry.
  • Poster papers (2 pages): Reseach in progress, tools, problem descriptions, new ideas.

Each paper must conform to the two columns IEEE conference publication format and must be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair. Submissions will be evaluated according to the relevance and originality of the work and to their ability to generate discussions between the participants of the workshop. Three reviewers will review each paper and all the accepted papers will be published as part of the ICST proceedings.

Important Dates

  • Submission of full papers: 20th January, 2021
  • Notification of acceptance: 9th February, 2021
  • Camera Ready: 20th February, 2021
  • Workshop date: 12th April, 2021

Submission Site

Submissions will be handled via EasyChair: link.

Special Issue on Mutation Analysis and its Industrial Applications

We encourage authors of accepted papers to submit an extended version of their paper to a special issue on Mutation Analysis and its Industrial Applications published by the Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability (STVR).

Downloads: CfPpdf   CfPtxt

Organisation

Organisation

Program Chairs

Mohammad Amin Alipour
University of Houston
Jie M. Zhang
University College London

Program Committee

Amin Alipour (Co-chair)
University of Houston (United States)
Lin Deng
Towson University (United States)
Alex Denisov
ShiftLeft (Germany)
Gordon Fraser
University of Passau (Germany)
Sudipto Ghosh
Colorado State University (United States)
Rahul Gopinath
CISPA (Germany)
Alex Groce
Northern Arizona University (United States)
Giovani Guizzo
University College London (United Kingdom)
Jinhan Kim
KAIST (South Korea)
Birgitta Lindström
University of Skövde (Sweden)
Jie M. Zhang (Co-chair)
University College London (United Kingdom)
Mike Papadakis
University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Goran Petrovic
Google (United States)
José Miguel Rojas
University of Leicester (United Kingdom)
Donghwan Shin
University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Thierry Titcheu Chekam
University of Luxembourg (SnT) (Luxembourg)
Yiling Lou
Peking University (China)

Web Chair

Aftab Hussain
University of Houston (United States)

Keynotes

Moritz Beller

Software Engineering Researcher
Facebook

Dan Hao

Associate Professor
Peking University

Program

(GMT-3 Time)


09:00-09:10

Welcome


09:10-10:00

Keynote 1: Mutation for Compiler Testing


Prof. Dan Hao

10:00-10:50

Session 1


(Chair) Jie Zhang

Efficiently Sampling Higher Order Mutants Using Causal Effect


Saeyoon Oh and Seongmin Lee and Shin Yoo

Inducing Subtle Mutations with Program Repair


Florian Schwander and Rahul Gopinath and Andreas Zeller

Automatic Equivalent Mutants Classification Using Abstract Syntax Tree Neural Networks


Samuel Peacock and Lin Deng and Josh Dehlinger and Suranjan Chakraborty

10:50-11:00

Break (10 min)


11:00-11:50

Keynote 2: What It Would Take to Use Mutation Testing in Industry


Moritz Beller

11:50-12:00

Awarding session


12:00-12:30

Session 2


(Chair) Amin Alipour

Random Selection Might Just be Indomitable


Rowland Pitts

MutantBench: an Equivalent Mutant Problem Comparison Framework


Lars van Hijfte and Ana Oprescu

12:30-12:30

Concluding Remarks


Registration

TBD . Early bird registration available until TBD.