Samiha Shimmi
Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science, Northern Illinois University
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Northern Illinois University, advised by Dr. Mona Rahimi, and a member of the Reliable AI-enabled Software Engineering (RAISE) Laboratory.
My research lies at the intersection of software engineering, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. I investigate how software vulnerabilities and their fixes evolve over time by mining large-scale software repositories and analyzing semantic, syntactic, and contextual code changes. My work focuses on understanding vulnerability reintroduction, attack–defense co-evolution, and the characteristics of security-related code evolution to enable more proactive software security.
To address these challenges, I develop AI-driven techniques that combine deep learning, machine learning, large language models, and program analysis to detect vulnerabilities, identify future vulnerability risks, and improve the reliability of security fixes. My goal is to build intelligent systems that help developers prevent vulnerabilities before they become exploitable.
I am actively seeking research and teaching opportunities in software engineering, cybersecurity, and AI-enabled software systems.
Selected Publications
View all →SVM 2026 · 2026
EnCyCriS @ ICSE 2025 · 2025
USENIX Security 2024 · 2024
News & Highlights
Paper titled "Process-based Indicators of Vulnerability Re-Introducing Code Changes: An Exploratory Case Study" (with Nicholas M. Synovic, Mona Rahimi, and George K. Thiruvathukal) was accepted at The International Workshop on Software Vulnerability Management (SVM) 2026.
Presented poster "Process-Based Predictors of Vulnerability Reintroduction" at SC25 (Super Computing 2025) in St. Louis, a collaborative work between Northern Illinois University and Loyola University Chicago
Delivered an invited talk titled "From Detection to Prediction: Multi-Dimensional Embedding Similarity for Software Security" at the CS seminar series, Mathematics and Computer Science division, Argonne National Laboratory
Presented "Predicting Future Cyber Attacks in Software by Identifying Attack-Defense Co-evolution Patterns" at the ALCF Student Poster Session, Argonne National Laboratory
Served as a Research Aide Technical (Summer Intern) at Argonne National Laboratory.
Awarded the Trudy Nicholls Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science at Northern Illinois University.