University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa faculty and students were front and center at an international conference, helping to shape the future of information technology, cybersecurity and more.

The (ESEM 2025) was held in Honolulu, September 28–October 3, as part of Empirical Software Engineering International Week. The conference brought together more than 100 leading researchers and practitioners from multiple countries in the field of software engineering. UH Mānoa stood out through exceptional faculty leadership, student involvement and research contributions.

Three faculty members held key leadership roles in organizing the conference: Associate Professor Daniel Port served as general chair of ESEM 2025, overseeing the event’s overall planning and execution; Department of Information Technology Management Professor Rick Kazman was finance chair; and (ICS) Assistant Professor Anthony Peruma was the student volunteer chair, managing a team of volunteers who supported the conference sessions and logistics. Additionally, ICS Assistant Professor Italo Santos assisted with local arrangements.

Beyond faculty leadership, UH Mānoa was represented by four graduate students from the ICS department—Derek Garcia, Kayla-Marie Torres, Carol Wong and Briana Lee—along with ICS Senior Academic Advisor Kenny Kaʻaiakamanu-Quibilan, who served as conference volunteers, helping ensure the event’s success, while gaining valuable professional experience and exposure to leading research in the field.

UH’s research presence was strong, with four papers presented at the conference authored by faculty and students from ICS, demonstrating the department’s growing contributions to cutting-edge software engineering research.

The papers covered a range of topics:

• “” investigated how large language models can assist in automatically enhancing method naming practices in scientific codebases.
• “” examined the extent and patterns of identifier similarities across software projects.
• “” proposed a novel vulnerability detection system to identify and verify sensitive information exposure in Java applications.
• “” synthesized research on tools and methods to assist new contributors joining software projects.

“UH Mānoa’s prominent participation in this internationally recognized conference underscores its rising influence in the global empirical software engineering community,” Peruma said. “The combination of leadership, scholarship and student engagement reflects the university’s commitment to advancing software engineering education and research.”

A dedicated group of students at the University of �鶹��ý at Hilo has completed a year-long project to upgrade the software on a planetary rover. The rover, named Helelani, will be used for testing by space agencies around the world.

Helelani weighs 700 pounds and is equipped with a variety of instruments and imaging systems. It can be controlled remotely and is designed to navigate the rugged terrain on �鶹��ý Island, which is similar to the landscapes on the Moon and Mars.

UH Hilo students AJ Garcia, Daniel Malone, Jaden Matsunaka and Richard Sevao served as interns at the campus’ (PISCES). PISCES is a program that focuses on research and education related to Earth and space exploration.

Under the guidance of Christian Andersen, PISCES research director, the students updated the rover’s software code. They also received support from H. Keith Edwards, a computer science professor who mentored the students in a two-semester software engineering class.

“This is a good type of project for software engineering classes since students are forced to work with someone else’s code and understand how it works, which is quite similar to what happens in their first software development job,” said Edwards.

Hands-on Learning

Undergraduates at UH Hilo use the rover for hands-on experience in robotics, engineering and programming. Each year, a group of Edwards’ students work on the rover’s hardware and software systems as part of an internship program.

According to Edwards, the project gave students the opportunity to learn about the structure of the code that runs Helelani and understand how it works.

“They were also able to update the operating system for the mission control station and were able to get the code base to work with the new operating system,” said Edwards.

Next: Fine-tuning a 360-degree camera

The students also experimented with implementing a new 360-degree camera into the rover. The work will continue with a new group of students this coming school year.

–By Susan Enright