Amr El-Sayed
PhD Candidate Computer Science
Research Profile
We recently spoke with Amr El-Sayed, a third-year Ph.D. Student in Computer Science at Baylor. Amr shared that he chose Baylor due to his desire to work with faculty specializing in his research interests—especially Dr. Tomas Cerny. Read more from our conversation with Amr below.
Why did you choose to attend Baylor for Graduate School?
I chose to attend Baylor for Graduate School because it offered a unique combination of factors that perfectly aligned with my academic and career goals. My decision was primarily driven by my desire to work with professors who specialize in the specific area of my research interests. During my extensive search for potential advisors, I came across the impressive profile of Dr. Tomas Cerny, whose work closely aligned with my academic passions. I reached out to Dr. Cerny, and he suggested that I consider applying for a PhD program at Baylor University due to his affiliation there. The prospect of working with Dr. Cerny, along with Baylor's prestigious reputation in my field, greatly influenced my decision, making Baylor the clear choice for advancing my academic and research journey.
What are your research interests?
My primary research interest lies in the field of software engineering, with a particular focus on software architecture, its analysis, assessment, and visualization. Specifically, I am deeply engrossed in exploring the intricacies of cloud-native and microservice architectures. These areas captivate me due to their inherent complexity and the ongoing advancements in the field, offering rich opportunities for innovation and addressing real-world challenges.
What opportunities or implications stem from your research?
My research in software architecture, particularly in cloud-native and microservice architectures, brings a new foundation to scientific advancements in decentralized system analysis and reasoning. Its significance lies in the potential to enhance the quality of microservices-based systems, reducing maintenance time and costs. This research aims to enable the assessment of system quality at various development stages, preventing issues from reaching production. Moreover, it contributes to improving consistency across diverse microservices codebases, crucial for robust and trustworthy systems. This work establishes guidelines for holistic system analysis, addressing concerns like consistency and security, and fosters assessment mechanisms for decentralized system evolution, ultimately benefiting both industry practices and scientific progress.
What research excites you right now?
While my primary research interests revolve around microservice architecture, there are several exciting developments in the broader field of software engineering that currently pique my interest. One area that I find particularly captivating is the intersection of artificial intelligence and software development. I am especially focused on AI's potential to assess and reason about microservice architecture, aiding in its evolution during changes. The ability of AI to automate and enhance architectural analysis holds tremendous promise.
Additionally, I am enthusiastic about building consistent guidelines and a catalog specifically tailored to microservice architecture. This endeavor aims to rectify the challenge of transferring outdated guidelines from traditional software architecture to microservices, recognizing and addressing the critical differences between these architectural paradigms. Furthermore, leveraging my extensive professional experience in mobile development, combined with my prior master's degree in mobile cloud computing, I'm keen to explore ways to enhance and ensure more reliable communication in the context of connecting with cloud-native systems. These emerging areas of research not only align with my current interests but also offer exciting avenues for advancing the field of software engineering.
How does Baylor help you achieve your research?
Baylor University offers a robust support system that significantly aids my research endeavors. This support encompasses a range of valuable resources, such as the writing center, which assists in refining research documents and securing unbiased feedback. Baylor also provides ample opportunities for research presentations, offering financial assistance for travel. Furthermore, the university's recognition programs, under the guidance of President Dr. Linda Livingstone, Human Resources, and the graduate school, serve as strong motivators, acknowledging and celebrating hard work through various awards. Importantly, the inclusive and encouraging community at Baylor fosters innovation, constructive feedback, and an inspiring atmosphere that, combined with the incredible support and feedback from my supervisor, Dr. Cerny, fuels my enthusiasm to achieve my research objectives happily and effectively.
If you are working on a thesis or dissertation, briefly describe your topic.
My dissertation focuses on 'Leveraging System Analysis to Improve Microservice Quality’. The goal is to develop an automated assessment framework for microservice architecture, enhancing practitioners' understanding of architecture and interactions. This model considers human-centric aspects through architectural visualization and automated evaluation factors, including coupling detection, testing coverage measurement, and semantic clone identification. Through controlled experiments and studies, the research validates that this framework offers valuable insights by adopting a holistic approach to address microservice-related issues.
What grants (if any) have you received for your research while at Baylor?
- NSF IRES Track I: U.S.-Czech Student Research Experience on Software Test Automation and Quality Assurance, Grant No. 1854049.
- NSF IRES Track I: US-Finnish research on sustainable evolution and technical debt management in cloud-native systems, Grant No:2245287.
- Red Hat Research: https://research.redhat.com
Featured Publications
In close collaboration with my supervisor and colleagues, we have achieved significant progress in our research endeavors. Below, you can find some of our recent publications. For a more comprehensive list, I invite you to explore my Google Scholar profile (Amr S. Abdelfattah) at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hszZV4YAAAAJ.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S., and Tomas Cerny. 2023. "Roadmap to Reasoning in Microservice Systems: A Rapid Review" Applied Sciences 13, no. 3: 1838. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13031838.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S., Alejandro Rodriguez, Andrew Walker, and Tomas Cerny. "Detecting Semantic Clones in Microservices Using Components." SN Computer Science 4, no. 5 (2023): 470. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-023-01910-1.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S., Micah Schiewe, Jacob Curtis, Tomás Cerný, and Eunjee Song. "Towards Security-Aware Microservices: On Extracting Endpoint Data Access Operations to Determine Access Rights." In CLOSER, pp. 15-23. 2023. http://doi.org/10.5220/0011707500003488.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S., and Tomas Cerny. "Filling The Gaps in Microservice Frontend Communication: Case for New Frontend Patterns." In CLOSER, pp. 184-193. 2023. https://doi.org/10.5220/0011812500003488.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S., T. Cerny, D. Taibi and S. Vegas, "Comparing 2D and Augmented Reality Visualizations for Microservice System Understandability: A Controlled Experiment," 2023 IEEE/ACM 31st International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), Melbourne, Australia, 2023, pp. 135-145. http://doi.org/10.1109/ICPC58990.2023.00028.]
- Cerny, Tomas, Amr S. Abdelfattah, Vincent Bushong, Abdullah Al Maruf, and Davide Taibi. "Microvision: Static analysis-based approach to visualizing microservices in augmented reality." In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), pp. 49-58. IEEE, 2022. http://doi.org/10.1109/SOSE55356.2022.00012.
- Abdelfattah, Amr S. "Microservices-based systems visualization: student research abstract." In Proceedings of the 37th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1460-1464. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1145/3477314.3506963.