Alina Mailach
Leipzig University
Chair of Software Systems / ScaDS.AI
Augustusplatz 10
04109 Leipzig
| Room: Phone: E-mail: | P622 (Paulinum) D03.20 (Löhrs Carré) +49 (0) 341 97 323 47 (Paulinum) alina.mailach@informatik.uni-leipzig.de |
Research Interest
With my interdisciplinary background in data/computer science and psychology, I am especially interested in understanding the vast variety of social and technical challenges that accompany the development of ML-enabled systems. Furthermore, I have a general interest in empirical methods and open and reusable research artifacts.
Thesis Supervision
I supervise undergraduate and graduate theses that are related to my research interests. If you are interested in my research directions and would like to write your thesis in my field, feel free to contact me!
NOTE: I will not be supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s theses again until July 2026. Only contact me if you want to start by then.
Finished and ongoing theses
- [Master] KI-Code Assistenten und Produktivität von Softwareentwicklern: Eine industrielle Fallstudie
- [Bachelor] Entwicklung eines Tools zur Unterstützung qualitativer Forschung mit Large Language Models
- [Bachelor] Automatische Generierung von Visualisierungen basierend auf Datenflüssen in einer Microservice Architektur
- [Bachelor] Fine-Tuning a Foundation Model for Qualitative Research
- [Bachelor] Managing Prompt Engineering Experiments: Tools and User’s needs
- [Bachelor] Qualitative Methods and Artifacts in Software Engineering Research
- [Bachelor] Socio-Technical Challenges in Software Engineering
Publications
2026
- Annemarie Wittig, Alina Mailach, and Norbert Siegmund. Fragmented Markers, Mixed Results: A Systematic Review of AI Coding Assistants and Developer Productivity. International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2026.
- Alina Mailach, Janet Siegmund, Sven Apel, and Norbert Siegmund. Views on Internal and External Validity in Empirical Software Engineering: 10 Years Later and Beyond. International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2026.
2025
- Sebastian Simon, Alina Mailach, Johannes Dorn, and Norbert Siegmund. On Automating Configuration Dependency Validation via Retrieval-Augmented Generation. International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, ASE 2025. Accepted August 2025.
- Max Weber, Alina Mailach, Sven Apel, Janet Siegmund, Raimund Dachselt, and Norbert Siegmund. Understanding Debugging as Episodes: A Case Study on Performance Bugs in Configurable Software Systems. ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), June, 2025.
- Alina Mailach, Sebastian Simon, Johannes Dorn, and Norbert Siegmund. Themes of Building LLM-based Applications for Production: A Practitioner’s View. In 4th International Conference on AI Engineering – Software Engineering for AI (CAIN), April, 2025
2024
- Alina Mailach, Dominik Gorgosch, Norbert Siegmund, and Janet Siegmund. ‚Ok Pal, We Have to Code That Now‘: Interaction Patterns of Programming Beginners with a Conversational Chatbot. Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), to appear.
- Alina Mailach and Norbert Siegmund. Socio-Technical Challenges and Recommendations for Mitigation when Building ML-enabled Systems. In Software Engineering 2024, pages 87-88. Gesellschaft für Informatik eV, 2024.
- Sebastian Simon, Alina Mailach, Johannes Dorn, and Norbert Siegmund. A Methodology for Evaluating RAG Systems: A Case Study On Configuration Dependency Validation. 2024. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.08801.
2023
- Alina Mailach and Norbert Siegmund. Socio-Technical Anti-Patterns in Building ML-Enabled Software: Insights from Leaders on the Forefront. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 690–702. IEEE, May, 2023. Acceptance rate: 26% (209 / 796). DOI: 10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00067
[preprint][artifacts][poster]
Talks
- FSE 2026: Views on Internal and External Validity in Empirical Software Engineering: 10 Years Later and Beyond
- ICSE 2026 (online): Views on Internal and External Validity in Empirical Software Engineering: 10 Years Later and Beyond
- FSE 2025: ‚Ok Pal, We Have to Code That Now‘: Interaction Patterns of Programming Beginners with a Conversational Chatbot.
- SE 2024: Socio-Technical Challenges and Recommendations for Mitigation in Building ML-Enabled Systems (Feb 26- Mar 1, 2024, Linz, Austria)
- ICSE 2023: Socio-Technical Anti-Patterns in Building ML-Enabled Software (May 14-20, 2023, Melbourne, Australia)
- FOSD 2023: Towards Reproducible and Reusable Artifacts in Performance Learning Experiments (March 27-31, 2023, Ulm, Germany)