Una-May OReilly (editor) - Search-Based Software Engineering: 13th International Symposium, SSBSE 2021, Bari, Italy, October 11–12, 2021, Proceedings

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Welcome to the 13th Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (SSBSE 2021). SSBSE is a premium venue dedicated to the discussion of novel ideas and applications of search-based software engineering, a research area focused on the formulation of software engineering problems as search problems. A wealth of engineering challenges can leverage the application of automated approaches and optimization techniques from AI and machine learning research.

This year, SSBSE was again organized as a virtual conference due to travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We would like to thank the members of the Organizing Committee for their effort in making the virtual event a success. We thank the track chairs for their great work in creating an exciting conference program: Una-May OReilly and Xavier Devroey (Research track), Tim Menzies (Journal First track), Ruchika Malhotra and Bruno Lima (New Ideas and Emerging Results track), Venera Arnaoudova and Gabriele Bavota (Replications and Negative Results track), and Gregory Gay and Ren Just (Challenge track). We thank Wesley K. G. Assuno, our publication chair, for their remarkable effort in coordinating the proceedings. We thank Marios Fokaefs for their support in organizing the virtual event. Last but not least, we thank our publicity chairs, Rebecca Moussa and Fiorella Zampetti, for their job in advertising SSBSE through mailing lists and social media, and Luigi Quaranta for setting up our website.

Finally, we would like to thank the University of Bari and Polytechnique Montreal and our sponsor Facebook for the generous support to SSBSE 2021 and the forthcoming 2022 installment.

Looking forward to seeing you all online!

On behalf of the SSBSE 2021 Program Committee, it is our pleasure to present the proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering.

The field of Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) has grown tremendously in the last few years, with research covering a wide range of topics in the intersection of software engineering and search algorithms. As in the previous years, and despite the deep impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which has been going on for over a year now, SSBSE 2021 continues to bring together the international SBSE community to present innovations, discuss new ideas, and celebrate progress in the field. This year we received 21 papers in total across four tracks: 14 full research papers, 3 challenge solutions, and 4 replications and negative results (RENE) papers. We would like to thank the authors for their submissions, and issue our appreciation for their efforts in advancing the SBSE field.

The success of SSBSE depends completely on the effort, talent, and energy of researchers in the field of search-based software engineering who have written and submitted papers on a variety of topics. Following a strict review process, where each submission received three reviews, we accepted 11 papers: 7 papers in the research track, 2 papers in the RENE track, and 2 papers in the challenge solutions track. The Program Committee members and external reviewers, who have invested significant time in assessing multiple papers, and who hold and maintain a high standard of quality for this conference, also deserve our appreciation. Their dedicated work and support makes this symposium possible and results in a stronger community.

In addition to a program full of research talks, SSBSE 2021 attendees had the opportunity to learn more about search-based system testing with EvoMaster in a tutorial given by Andrea Arcuri, Professor at Kristiania University College, Norway. Finally, SSBSE 2021 featured two outstanding keynotes from Aldeida Aleti, Associate Professor at Monash University, Australia, and Massimiliano Di Penta, Full Professor at the University of Sannio, Italy. We thank them for accepting our invitation and for their insightful talks!

We hope you enjoy the work contained in this volume and you can apply it to your own work. We are proud of the program assembled this year, and are thankful for the opportunity to present these proceedings to the SBSE research community.