Research
I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science in University of Calgary and an avid enthusiast of Software Engineering (SE) who firmly believes the profound value of SE research not only in enhancing the quality of developers' job role, but also in enriching the very fabric of humanity. I lead the Quest Research Group at the University of Calgary, where we conduct research on Video Game Testing repairing, Video Game Crashes, Human Aspects in Software Engineering, and Continuous Integration. Chack out my Google Scholar page and UCalgary Profile for more updates on my research work.
Available Positions
Unfortunately, there are no available positions at the moment.
Resume
Sumary
🌟 Proven Track Record of Research Publications: I have consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to research, with numerous publications in premier software engineering journals and conferences, including ICSE-SEIP 2025, FSE 2024, TSE 2025, and EMSE 2023. 📚✨
👩🎓 Proven Track Record of Student Mentorship: Over the past three years, I have mentored two MSc students and an Undergraduate Research Assistant, resulting in one of our papers being published (MSR 2024 📖, with two other exciting projects currently ongoing! 🚀💡
🏢 Proven Track Record of Industry Research: Over the past two years, I have actively contributed to industry research with Ubisoft Toronto, making significant contributions to literature (ICSE-SEIP 2025). 🎮📊
Education
Doctor of Philosophy & Computer Science
May 2022 - June 2025
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
My research interests include Diversity in SE, Continuous Integration, and Crash report analysis. My research group is Software REBELS.
Master of Science & Computer Science
January 2020 - April 2022
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
My research work includes analysis of Stack Overflow datasets. My thesis is available here.
Bachelor of Science & Information Technology
March 2014 - June 2018
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Core modules include Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition, Big data Analytics, Artificial Neural Networks, Artificial In- telligence, Data mining and Warehousing, and Database Management Systems. My final year research is building an an Advanced Backtesting Tool for Forex Traders Using Machine Learning.
Employment
Assistant Professor
Jul 2025 - Present
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
My research interests include Video Game Testing and Debugging, Video Game Crashes, Software Crashes, Continuous Integration, and Human Aspects in SE, .
Research & Development Intern
May 2023 - December 2024
Ubisoft
- Work as an Intern in the La Forge team.
- Analysis of large datasets on Hadoop eco-system, and several other data sources.
Data Science Engineer
March 2019 - December 2019
BooleanLabs (PVT) LTD, Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Develop a near-realtime Intelligent Log Analysis and Risk Prediction System designed for a telecommunication company.
- Implement a Hidden Markov Model to predict server breakdowns.
- Design the modular structure of the backend server using Django, a python framework.
- Work with PostgreSQL databases and several python libraries such as PyTorch, Statsmodels, Scikit-learn, etc.
Software Engineer
July 2018 - February 2019
99X Technology (PVT) LTD, Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Work as a software developer in Compello Connect, an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and eInvoice Approval System, which was implemented using C# .NET.
- Develop a desktop application using C#.NET to anonymize XML log files.
Trainee Software Engineer
December 2016 - June 2017
99X Technology (PVT) LTD, Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Work as a full stack developer in a payment platform. The technologies used were AngularJS for the front-end and NodeJS and AWS for the backend.
Publications
Please checkout my Google Scholar page for more updates.
Marsad F, Weeraddana N. OSSGameBench: A Large-Scale Dataset of Contributor Activities in the Open-Source Video Games. International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 2026. [Short Paper][Replication Package].
Yoshioka H, Monno T, Tokumasu H, Wakamatsu T, Ota Y, Weeraddana N, Matsumoto K. Let's Make Every Pull Request Meaningful: An Empirical Analysis of Developer and Agentic Pull Requests. International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 2026 [Short Paper][Replication Package].
Weeraddana N, Habchi S, McIntosh S. Crash Report Prioritization for Large-Scale Scheduled Launches. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2025. [Paper][Replication Package][Slides].
Weeraddana N, Alfadel M, McIntosh S. Characterizing Timeout Builds in Continuous Integration. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2024. [Paper][Replication Package][Slides].
Weeraddana N, Alfadel M, McIntosh S. Dependency-Induced Waste in Continuous Integration: An Empirical Study of Unused Dependencies in the npm Ecosystem. International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2024. [Paper][npm Package][Slides].
Kola-Olawuyi A, Weeraddana N, Nagappan M. The Impact of Code Ownership of DevOps Artefacts on the Outcome of DevOps CI Builds. Mining Software Repositories (MSR) 2024. [Paper][Replication Package][Slides].
Weeraddana N, Xu X, Alfadel M, McIntosh S, Nagappan M. An empirical comparison of ethnic and gender diversity of DevOps and non-DevOps contributions to open-source projects. Empirical Software Engineering. 2023 Nov;28(6):150. [Paper][Replication Package][Slides].
Weeraddana N, Premaratne SA. Unique approach for cricket match outcome prediction using xgboost algorithms. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology. 2021.
Weeraddana N, Silva AT, Jayathilake PW. Detection of black regions in the forex market by analyzing high-frequency intraday data. In2018 18th International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer) 2018.
Jayathilake PW, Weeraddana N, Hettiarachchi HK. Automatic detection of multi-line templates in software log files. In2017 Seventeenth International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer) 2017.
Guest Speeches
A Motivational Talk: 10 lessons that I learned during my academic journey so far. Univeristy of Calgary. Canada. November 2025
QA practices for video Games. AI-Driven SE Summit. Japan. November 2025
Crash Report Prioritization for Video Games. Nara Institute of Science and Technology. Japan. December 2025
Service
Faculty Member Representation at HerAI Inititative. University of Calgary. January 2026-Present
Faculty Member Representation at Kennedy Scholars Weekends. University of Calgary. January 2026
Reviewer for TSE journal
Reviewer for TOSEM journal
Reviewer for JSS journal
PC Member in ASE Research Papaer Track 2026
PC Member in ICSME Research Papaer Track 2026
PC member for MSR Mining Challenge 2026
Junior PC member for MSR Technical Track 2026
Volunteer for ICSE 2025
Junior PC member for MSR Technical Track 2025
Volunteer for FSE 2024
Want to collaborate with me or be my mentee?
Location:
ICT 553, ICT building, University of Calgary