Nasir Eisty, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor  ·  Min H. Kao Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Researching AI-Driven Software Engineering with a focus on empirical methods, scientific and research software quality, quantum software engineering: testing, peer code review, technical debt, security, metrics and sustainability.

neisty@utk.edu Schedule a Meeting
Open to Collaborators Welcoming Fulbright scholars, visiting researchers, postdocs & international collaborators worldwide.
Nasir Eisty, Ph.D.
01

Experience

Full History →
Aug 2025 –
Present
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Assistant Professor, Min H. Kao EECS
Aug 2025 –
Present
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Director, SAIL — Software Analytics and Intelligence Lab
Aug 2025 –
Present
IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE)
Department Editor, Software Engineering & Scientific Computing
Jan 2024 –
Present
United States Research Software Engineering (US-RSE)
Founder and Co-Chair, Software Testing Working Group
Jan 2026 –
Present
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Guest Scientist
02

Research Areas

Research Lab →
01 —
Empirical Software Engineering
AI-driven, data-intensive studies of software development practices, developer behavior, and engineering processes in real-world systems to surface actionable insights.
02 —
Scientific Software Quality
Applying AI-augmented software engineering methods to research and computational science software, ensuring reproducibility, correctness, and long-term sustainability.
03 —
AI-Assisted Testing
Leveraging large language models and machine learning to automate test generation, fault localization, and quality assurance across diverse software systems.
04 —
Peer Code Review
Using AI-driven analysis to understand and improve code review effectiveness, comment usefulness, and collaborative decision-making in development teams.
05 —
Software Metrics
Developing AI-informed quantitative measures for software quality, complexity, maintainability, and developer productivity across open-source and scientific codebases.
06 —
Technical Debt
Identifying, quantifying, and managing technical debt using AI-driven detection techniques to improve long-term software maintainability and reduce rework costs.
03

Work

📚
Teaching
Courses taught in software engineering, testing, and related computer science topics.
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Research
Publications, projects, grants, and current lab activities and ongoing investigations.
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Service
Conference organizing, program committees, reviewing, and community leadership roles.
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04

Latest News

All News →
Apr 2026
Eventful ICSE 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Contributing with the lab and collaborators across workshops, tracks, and organization:
  • Eric Melin, Adam Torek, Nasir Eisty, Casey Kennington — Precision or Peril: A PoC of Python Code Quality from Quantized Large Language Models at the AI4SQE Workshop
  • Shane Panter, Nasir Eisty — Technical Lag as Latent Technical Debt: A Rapid Review at TechDebt 2026
  • Jeremy Husle, Nasir Eisty, Tim Menzies — Shaky Structures: The Wobbly World of Causal Graphs in Software Analytics at Journal First Track
  • Shaznin Sultana, Sadia Afreen, Nasir Eisty — LLMs in Code Vulnerability Analysis: A Proof of Concept at the SVM Workshop
  • Organizing the SERS Workshop with Jeffrey Carver, Myra Cohen, Stephan Druskat, Alfredo Goldman, Daniel Katz & Reed Milewicz
  • Chairing a Research Track session on Testing and Analysis
Conference
Apr 2026
Paper Applications of Causality in Software Testing: A Rapid Review by Tiancheng Ma & Nasir Eisty accepted at EASE 2026 in Glasgow, UK. Congratulations to Tiancheng Ma! Paper
Apr 2026
Paper Self-Admitted Technical Debt in Scientific Software: Prioritization, Sentiment, and Propagation Across Artifacts by Eric Melin, Nasir Eisty, Addi Thakur & Greg Watson accepted at PEARC 2026 in Minneapolis, MN, USA. Congratulations to Eric! Paper
Apr 2026
Paper Peer Code Review in Research Software: Practices, Improvements, and Implementation Challenges from Interviews of RSEs by Ariful Malik, Jeffrey Carver & Nasir Eisty accepted at PEARC 2026 in Minneapolis, MN, USA. Congratulations to Ariful! Paper
Mar 2026
My 3rd Ph.D. advisee Shane Panter successfully defended his dissertation Measuring Technical Lag in Software Ecosystems: An Empirical Approach. Congratulations, Dr. Shane Panter! Milestone
Mar 2026
Eric Melin passed his Ph.D. proposal When Science Admits Its Shortcuts: Detecting and Managing Self-Admitted Technical Debt in Scientific Software. Congratulations, Eric! Milestone
Oct 2025
Serving as Program Committee Member for ICSE 2026 and ISSTA 2026. Service
Oct 2025
Won Best Poster Award at US-RSE 2025 for Ten Simple Rules for Catalyzing Collaborations and Building Bridges Between Research Software Engineers and Software Engineering Researchers with Johanna Cohoon & Jeffrey Carver. Award
Sep 2025
Two articles published in IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE). Thanks to all collaborators! Paper
Aug 2025
Assumed the role of Department Editor for the Software Engineering & Scientific Computing department of IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE). Role
Aug 2025
Joined the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. Milestone
2025
Sheikh Md. Mushfiqur Rahman presented our poster Exploring Sustainability in Scientific Software Through Code Quality Metrics at the 2025 Smoky Mountains Computational Sciences and Engineering Conference.
Jul 2025
Paper Shaky Structures: The Wobbly World of Causal Graphs in Software Analytics published in the EMSE Journal in collaboration with Jeremy Husle & Tim Menzies (NC State University). Paper
Jun 2025
NSF grant on formal methods in scientific software funded with Dr. Elena Sherman & Dr. Grady Wright. Grant
May 2025
Paper PVAC: Package Version Activity Categorizer, Leveraging Semantic Versioning in a Heterogeneous System by Shane Panter and Luke Hindman published in the EMSE Journal. Congratulations to Shane! Paper
Apr 2025
Ph.D. student Sharif Ahmed will join University of Central Arkansas CS as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Fall 2025. Placement
Apr 2025
Mushfiqur Rahman will intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory this summer. Shane Panter passed his Ph.D. proposal. Milestone
Jan 2025
Paper Testing Research Software: An In-Depth Survey of Practices, Methods, and Tools accepted in the EMSE Journal with Upulee Kanewala & Jeffrey Carver. Paper
Jan 2025
Paper Hold On! Is My Feedback Useful? Evaluating the Usefulness of Code Review Comments accepted in the EMSE Journal. Congratulations to Sharif! Paper
Nov 2024
Sharif Ahmed & Shariful Alam passed their Ph.D. proposals. Eric Melin passed his comprehensive exam. Congratulations to all! Milestone
Sep 2024
Poster Software Testing Practices for Reproducible Open Science accepted to AGU 2024 in Washington D.C.
Jul 2024
Paper Rusty Linux: Advances in Rust for Linux Kernel Development accepted to ESEM 2024 in Barcelona. Congratulations to Shane! Paper
Mar 2024
Attended Dagstuhl Seminar Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Germany.
Dec 2022
Grant ($250K) funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Grant
Sep 2021
Paper Developers’ Perceptions of Peer Code Review in Research Software accepted to EMSE. Paper
05

Contact

Office
353 Min H. Kao Building
1520 Middle Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996
Email
neisty@utk.edu
Phone
(865) 974-0994
Schedule
calendly.com/nasireisty
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Profile

Prospective Students & Collaborators

The lab actively welcomes UTK EECS students seeking research advisors, fulbright scholars, visiting researchers, postdocs, and international collaborators. Don’t hesitate to reach out — happy to chat about opportunities.