MCIS

lab on Maintenance, Construction and Intelligence of Software

Email:




Join MCIS!

If you recognize yourself in the vision behind MCIS, and are interested in a PhD or Master's degree, or you would like to be a research intern, work on a project or cook for us, don't hesitate to contact us at (see below)! Don't worry about our reaction, we respect you and will look at your file. If we think things might not work out, we will still provide you with feedback.


So, what can we offer you? A friendly research environment, stimulating discussions, pragmatic advice and mentoring, support in all your endeavours, and, above all, fun! Yes, there will be a lot of work and sometimes you will curse yourself, but if you fit our vision, you will be armed enough to survive such stressful periods. And remember, after rain comes sunshine (or ice)! And don't forget about Kingston (Ontario) itself. It's a great, surprising city next to Lake Ontario with lots of things going on and a splendid nature.


OK, where's the catch, i.e., what do we expect from you? As a PhD or Master's student, you will need to follow some courses, perform research, present and report your work at conferences and in journal papers, assist with some courses, and help managing the lab. Don't worry if this sounds like a lot to do, you'll experience one thing at a time and slowly roll into things.


If you're still interested, contact us at , providing us with:

  • your CV
  • your transcripts
  • a short paper in English that answers the following 5 questions (each answer between 200 and 500 words):
    1. Why would you like to do research?
    2. What is your favourite programming language or project and why?
    3. What open source development experience do you have?
    4. What is your favourite editor, and why?
    5. What are your research interests?


Note that there is no right or wrong answer to the questions above. The short paper provides us with a better view about you and your interests, and provides you with an opportunity to better present yourself. So, it is much more interesting for all of us if you write about personal anecdotes, opinions or situations than to remain very vague and abstract or to reuse canned responses.


Depending on how busy our schedule is, we will get back to you as soon as possible with feedback about why your profile might or might not fit with our lab. If you seem to be what we are looking for, we will schedule an interview, at which time we will explain any further steps. In any case, don't hesitate to contact us!

Latest Work

FERREIRA, I., CHENG, J. and ADAMS, B. (2021). The “Shut the f**k up” Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions, in Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW (virtual), to appear. BibTeX


FOUNDJEM, A., EGHAN, E.E. and ADAMS, B. (2021). Onboarding vs. Diversity, Productivity and Quality -- Empirical Study of the OpenStack Ecosystem, in Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE (Madrid, Spain), to appear. (Acceptance ratio: 138/602=22.92%) BibTeX


BARRAK, A., EGHAN, E., ADAMS, B., and KHOMH, F. (2021). Why do Builds Fail? - A Conceptual Replication Study, Journal of Software and Systems (JSS), Elsevier, to appear. BibTeX


BARRAK, A., EGHAN, E.E. and ADAMS, B. (2021). On the Co-evolution of ML Pipelines and Source Code - Empirical Study of DVC Projects, in Proceedings of the 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering, SANER (Hawaii, USA), to appear. (Acceptance ratio: 42/165=25%) BibTeX