Tiago Massoni

Full Professor in Computer Science at UFCG, working on human factors in software engineering, software evolution, and interdisciplinary computing research.

Contact

• Email: massoni@computacao.ufcg.edu.br
• X (Twitter): @tiagomassoni
• ORCID: 0000-0002-9423-7556

Quick Navigation

• About
• Positions
• Research
• Teaching
• Industry Partnerships
• Education
• Work Experience
• Resources

About

• Lattes CV
• DBLP profile

Positions

• (Current) Associate Dean - Centre for Electrical Engineering and Informatics (CEEI)
• (Current) Technical Director, Telmo Araujo Innovation Center (CITTA), Campina Grande-PB
• (2019-2023) Head of Department, Department of Computing and Systems, UFCG
• (2019-2020) President, Brazilian Computer Society’s Formal Methods Committee
• (2015-2021) Vice Director, Embrapii CEEI-UFCG
• (2011-2013) Head of the Computer Science Bachelor Program, UFCG

Research

Human Factors in Software Development

• Career abandonment in software development: motivators for leaving the profession and links between technical factors and intention to leave.
  Selected outputs: CHASE 2025 Distinguished Paper (preprint), SBES
• Career entry in software engineering: Ph.D. student Danielly Gualberto investigates what motivates people with different educational backgrounds to enter the field; in special, she is investigating data from professionals who chose a late career in software engineering during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Diversity in software teams: women in agile estimation meetings and community smells, in collaboration with Alexander Serebrenik, Gemma Catolino, Damian Tamburri, and Fabio Palomba.
  Selected outputs: SBES, SANER
• Hybrid software and ML teams: Ph.D. student Sheila Paiva and M.Sc.student Regina Leticia investigate collaboration dynamics in mixed software/data science teams, with Prof. Franklin Ramalho.
• Community smells and agile retrospectives: Ph.D. student Carlos Fran investigates how retrospective meetings can mitigate social issues in teams.
  Selected output: CHASE 2025
• Leadership styles in agile teams: Ph.D. student Narallynne Maciel (with Prof. Lucas Gren) investigates leadership behavior and team outcomes.
  Selected outputs: SBES 2023, 2024
• Pair programming in AI-aided Software Engineering: helping Diego Lisboa and Prof. Cleidson de Souza in studies investigating the interaction between developer pairs and AI in development tasks.
  Selected outputs: We have recently had a paper accepted for SBES 2026 (preprint soon)

Software Evolution and Refactoring

• Code review and refactoring: Flavia Estelia completed her Ph.D. on whether code reviewers induce actual refactorings in repositories (with Prof. Everton Alves and Prof. Tsantalis).
  Selected outputs: ESE Journal, ESEM
• Code smells and LLM-assisted reviews: Marcelo Vitorino (M.Sc. 2024, now Ph.D. student, with Prof. Joao Brunet) investigates smell-related reviews and the impact of prompt context on LLM outputs.

Bug Reports

• With Prof. Franklin Ramalho, this line investigates how machine learning can support understanding the relationship between bug reports and bug management processes.
  Selected outputs: ASE Journal, ICEIS, SBES

Computer Science and Public Health

• In collaboration with medical doctors at UFCG and HUAC, this line explores LLM applications for image diagnostics.
• Through the multidisciplinary Project MEWAR, with researchers from Brazil, the UK, and Turkey, this work models mosquito populations for early warning and public health response to vector-borne diseases (e.g., Dengue and Zika).
  Selected outputs: Frontiers in Tropical Diseases, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Frontiers in Public Health

Formal Software Verification

• Domain-specific language for software requirement constraint verification (M.Sc. work by Marzina Vidal).
  Selected output: Science of Computer Programming
• With Prof. Rohit Gheyi, former Ph.D. student Alysson Milanez devised a method to generate design-by-contract clauses from textual commentary.
• Ph.D. work on co-evolution between Alloy specifications and object-oriented programs.
  Selected outputs: Ph.D. thesis, ETAPS paper

Teaching

• Mathematics for Computer Science II
• Human-Machine Interaction (Portuguese)
• Logic for Computer Science (Portuguese)
• Scientific Writing (Portuguese)

Industry Partnerships

avaliAI: Startup using multi-agent software architectures to innovate in social impact research.

VTEX: Observability of e-commerce sites and apps; training and hiring of ~60 undergraduate and graduate students.

Federal Police: Development of a high-scale investigation system with AI features; training of ~80 students.

HP: Data science systems for large maintenance data processing; more than 20 students involved.

Canon Medical (formerly Toshiba Medical): Network-based systems for medical collaboration using high-tech medical image devices; 8 students involved.

Ingenico: Innovative test processes and tools for card-reading devices; 12 students involved.

Compal: Innovation projects in computer vision, IoT, and assembly-line automation; 40 students involved.

Education

• Software Engineering, Ph.D. (2008), UFPE (Brazil)
• Computer Science, M.Sc. (2001), UFPE (Brazil)
• Computer Science, B.Sc. (1999), UFG (Brazil)

Work Experience

• UFCG: Associate Professor in Computer Science (2009-present), Campina Grande
• UPE: Adjunct Professor in Computer Engineering (2006-2009), Recife
• IBM: Software Developer (2001-2002), Silicon Valley Lab (USA)

Resources

• Research hints and tips
• Technology podcast transcriptions

Last updated: 2026-03-07