Biography
I graduated from a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Software Engineering) at Université Côte d’Azur / I3S - CNRS in France, under the supervision of Prof. Philippe Collet. My doctoral work is centered on the identification, consistency checking, and visualization of variability mechanisms in the build systems and implementation code of large variability-rich applications.
Although my research interests focus on the study and comprehension of mechanisms managing variability and configurability in large scale software systems, I am also interested in their practical application and design.
- Institutional : johann [dot] mortara [at] univ-cotedazur [dot] fr
- Personal : johann [dot] mortara [at] gmail [dot] com
You can find my academic resume here.
- Configurable Systems and Software Product Lines
- Software Variability
- Variability Identification
- Software Maintenance
- Code Comprehension
- Code Analysis
Ph.D. in Software Engineering, 2022
Université Côte d'Azur — I3S, CNRS
Master's degree in Management and Business Administration, 2020
Université Côte d'Azur — IAE Nice
M.Sc. in Software Engineering (Diplôme d'Ingénieur), 2019
Université Côte d'Azur — Polytech Nice Sophia
Education
Title: Mastering Variability in the Wild: On Object-Oriented Variability Implementations and Variability-Aware Build Systems
Advisor: Philippe Collet
This thesis focuses on the identification, consistency checking, and visualization of variability mechanisms in the build systems and implementation code of large variability-rich applications.
Teaching activities at graduate and undergraduate levels, focusing on software engineering, object-oriented design and reverse engineering.
Diplôme d’ingénieur specialized in Software Engineering.
Major topics include:
- Software Architecture
- DevOps
- DSLs
- Cloud Computing
- Reverse-Engineering
Research
and other professional experiences
When software systems implement their variability in a single codebase, multiple mechanisms allow to implement and resolve this variability. These implementations however add extra complexity in the system, hampering its comprehension and potentially leading to bugs and anomalies during the resolution. In this thesis, we study two types of such mechanisms. Firstly, we propose approaches to identify and visualize variability implemented in object-oriented systems to help developers understand the codebase’s implemented variability. Secondly, we propose a model to represent and reason on the variability managed in the build systems of large variability-rich systems and detect anomalies such as dead code.
- Supervised and participated in the development of multiple tool supports: symfinder-2, VariCity, VariMetrics-IDE.
- All tools have been validated on large open-source projects (from 20k to 4,5M LoC).
Design and development of symfinder, a prototype identifying and visualizing variability implementations in Java software projects.
This internship led to two publications at SPLC ’19 conference.
- Automatic detection method of variability in object-oriented constructs using symmetry concepts
- Visualization of the identified variability
- Obtained the ACM Artifact Reusable badge at SPLC'19 assessing reusability of the tool
Design of a solution aiming to place and keep a trace of smart-contracts on values fetched by sensors in a network using an Ethereum blockchain.
This internship is part of the I-WIN project of the IDEX UCA Jedi program.
- Development of a simulation prototype using Docker and physical deployment on Raspberry Pi boards
Recent Publications
Teaching
Level: 3rd year of B.Sc. (🇫🇷 Licence 3)
In this course, students dicover the bases of software engineering (designing tasks, use of a version control and dependencies manager, unit tests). The different concepts and tools are presented during the lectures and progressively incorporated during the labs sessions in a project lasting the whole duration of the course that students develop in groups of 3–4.
Level: 1st year of M.Sc. (🇫🇷 Master 1)
In this course, students learn object-oriented design using UML. The different concepts and tools are presented during the lectures and progressively incorporated during the labs sessions in a project lasting the whole duration of the course that students develop in groups of 3–4.
Level: 2nd year of M.Sc. (🇫🇷 Master 2)
In this course, students tackle research questions on topics related to the reverse-engineering of source code and need to answer them by applying a scientific method. At the start of the course, professors propose multiple research questions. Groups of 4–5 students choose one and propose a resolution method that they develop during the whole course. Lectures consist in multiple invited lectures from both academics and industrials being confonted to reverse-engineering challenges. During the labs, students work on their research question and develop the tools that help them in answering the question.
Lectures & Presentations
Service
- 2020 — Artifact Track committee member
Projects
Awards
Distinction awarded by Polytech Nice Sophia for representing the school regularly in multiple programming contest.
- French national competitions – Battle Dev, Coding Battle…
- SWERC 2018 – European qualification phase of the ACM ICPC contest (International Collegiate Programming Contest). This participation is also the first participation of Université Côte d’Azur and the Polytech network in an international programming contest. Ranked 59/81 participating teams.