Jacob Krüger
Assistant Professor for Software Engineering Eindhoven University of Technology
I am a software engineering researcher with a focus on human aspects in software evolution, integrating economics, psychology, and other domains into software engineering. Currently, I work as Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.
In 2021, I obtained my PhD from the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Leich and Prof. Gunter Saake. My dissertation (external reviewers: Prof. Jan Bosch and Prof. Rick Rabiser) focused on providing an empirics-based understanding of the re-engineering of variant-rich systems to support developers in the decision whether to rely on unsystematic or systematic software reuse. For this purpose, I studied modern practices of engineering variant-rich systems to derive a novel process model as well as guidelines for scoping and planning the (re-)engineering of variant-rich systems. Digging into the details of such re-engineering endeavors, I elicited insights into the economics of software reuse, the impact of missing knowledge, and how to improve the tracing of that knowledge. Building on my dissertation, I am advancing with a focus on developers’ cognition and the challenges therein that are related to software evolution.
If you are interested in collaborating with me (e.g., theses, research/industrial projects), just send me an email! Particularly for students, I can offer the following topics and their intersections (these are only examples, feel free to suggest your own!):
- Re-engineering variant-rich systems
- Economic impact of re-engineering
- Challenges of merging variants
- Quality in software evolution
- Degeneration of software architecture
- Code and bug propagation
- Cognition in software engineering
- Cognitive biases
- Program comprehension
- Fork-based software development
- Developer support for merging forks
- Knowledge recovery
- Guidelines for conducting research
- Management of research artifacts
- Empirical studies
Checkout my research and publications or ask me if you want to learn a bit more about these topics.
Short CV
During my research, I have worked in different (types of) universities and multiple countries, collaborating with various researchers and students.
- Since 09/2022 Assistant Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
- 06/2021-08/2022 Academic Council, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
- 05/2018–06/2021 Research Associate, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany
- 01/2020–03/2020 Visiting researcher, University of Toronto, Canada
- 10/2017–09/2018 Visiting researcher, Chalmers and University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- 03/2016–04/2018 Research Associate, Harz University of Applied Sciences Wernigerode, Germany
I have published full papers at community as well as various top venues (e.g., ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ESE, JSS, ICSME, JCDL), see the research or publication site for overviews. For my research, I have been rewarded research awards (e.g., 2020 Research Award of the Faculty for Computer Science of the Otto-von-Guericke University, 2019 ACM SIGSOFT-SIGBED Frank Anger Memorial Award, 2017 Wernigeröder Research Award) and fellowships (e.g., IFI, research visit, and conference traveling fellowships of the German Academic Exchange Service), and have been involved in numerous workshops, conferences, and journals (e.g., organizer of VM4ModernTech workshop ‘21, ‘22; co-chair of SPLC ‘20 Tools Track; reviewer at ESEC/FSE’23, ASE ‘22, SPLC ‘22, VaMoS’23 ‘22, Empirical Software Engineering ‘19-‘21, Journal of Systems and Software ‘22).