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Alvine Boaye Belle

Assistant Professor

Department:

Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Email: alvine.belle@lassonde.yorku.ca

Bio

Dr. Belle is a Cameroonian/Canadian computer scientist. She got into university at sixteen. She holds a PhD in software engineering from the University of Quebec (Ecole de Technologie Supérieure). She has completed a 2-year industrial postdoctoral in software engineering at the University of Ottawa. After completing her industrial postdoctoral, she worked for the federal public service of Canada. She has recently completed a graduate diploma in public administration and governance at McGill University. The curriculum of that diploma strengthened her skills in project management, and equipped her with strong leadership competencies. That curriculum also gave her the tools required to successfully manage very large and diverse organizational teams, and interpret the legal and ethical issues relevant to public organizations.

Dr. Belle is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Lassonde School of Engineering. She is the head of the DARE research group.

Dr. Belle currently serves on several international committees. She was a student volunteer co-chair at ICSE 2022. She is part of the EASE 2024 research program committee. She was part of the APSEC 2023 committee. She was also part of the ICSE 2024 organizing committee where she served as a diversity co-chair.

Dr. Belle is the reviewer of several high impact factor journals, including IEEE Software, the Software system Modeling (SoSym) journal, the Software Quality journal, the Information and Software Technology journal, and the Requirement Engineering journal.

Dr. Belle is also a mother, and she is very passionate about poetry, winning several local and international poetry contests. She speaks both French (her third language) and English (her fourth language).

Research Interests

  • System assurance
  • Assurance of safety requirements
  • Generative AI
  • Autonomous driving systems
  • Knowledge representation and reasoning
  • EDI (Equity-Diversity-Inclusion) in computing

Selected Publications

  1. Sivakumar, M., Belle, A.B., Shan, J., Odu, O.,  & Yuan, M. Design of the Safety Case of the Reinforcement Learning-enabled Component of a Quanser Autonomous Vehicle. Accepted by AIRE 2024.
  2. Shahandashti, K. K., Belle, A. B., Mohajer, M. M., Odu, O., Lethbridge, T. C., Hemmati, H. & Wang, S., & Wang, S. Using GPT-4 Turbo To Automatically Identify Defeaters In Assurance Cases. Accepted by AIRE 2024.
  3. Sivakumar, M., Belle, A.B., Shan,  & Shahandashti, K. K. Exploring the capabilities of large language models for the generation of safety cases: the case of GPT-4. Accepted by AIRE 2024.
  4. Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer, Reem Aleithan, Nima Shiri harzevili, Moshi Wei, Alvine Boaye Belle, Hung Viet Pham, and Song Wang. Effectiveness of ChatGPT for Static Analysis: How Far Are We? Accepted by the 1st ACM International Conference on AI-powered Software (AIware) in FSE 2024.
  5. Shahandashti, K. K., Sivakumar, M., Mohajer, M. M., Belle, A. B., Wang, S., & Lethbridge, T. C. (2024). Evaluating the Effectiveness of GPT-4 Turbo in Creating Defeaters for Assurance Cases. Accepted by the FORGE conference (co-located with ICSE 2024).
  6. Alvine Boaye Belle, Hadi Hemmati, Timothy C. Lethbridge. (2023). Position paper: a vision for the dynamic safety assurance of machine learning-enabled autonomous driving systems. In 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW) (pp. 297-301). IEEE.
  7. Belle, A. B., Sutherland, C., Adesina, O. O., Kpodjedo, S., Ojong, N., & Cole, L. (2023). Bolstering the persistence of black students in undergraduate computer science programs: A systematic mapping study. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 23(4), 1-42.
  8. Zakeya Namrud, Sègla Kpodjedo, Chamseddine Talhi, Ahmed Bali, and Alvine Boaye Belle. (2021). Deep learning Based Android Anomaly Detection Using a combination of vulnerabilities dataset. Applied Sciences, 11(16), 7538; doi:10.3390/app11167538
  9. Opeyemi O. Adesina, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Stéphane S. Somé, Vahdat Abdelzad, and Alvine Boaye Belle. (2018). Improving Formal Analysis of State Machines with Particular Emphasis on And-Cross Transitions. Computer Languages, Systems & Structures, 54, 544-585.
  10. Alvine Boaye Belle, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Miguel Garzón, and Opeyemi O. Adesina. (2018). Design and implementation of distributed expert systems: on a control strategy to manage the execution flow of rule activation. Expert Systems With Applications, 96, 129-148.
  11. Alvine Boaye Belle, Ghizlane El Boussaidi, and Segla Kpodjedo. (2016). Combining lexical and structural information to reconstruct software layers. Information and Software Technology, 74, 1-16.
  12. Alvine Boaye Belle, Ghizlane El Boussaidi, Christian Desrosiers, Sègla Kpodjedo, and Hafedh Mili. (2015). The layered architecture recovery as a quadratic assignment problem. In European Conference on Software Architecture (pp. 339-354). Springer, Cham.

Recent Projects

Bachelor’s [n=15]

  1. 2024/05 – 2024/08: principal supervisor of Karolina Tchilinguirova; Title of the research project: CiteFAIR: detecting and mitigating citation biases in computing literature. Project sponsored by the LURA award program.
  2. 2024/01 – 2024/04: principal supervisor of Gouled Mahamud (completed); Title of the research project: CiteFAIR: detecting citation biases in computing literature.
  3. 2024/05 – 2024/08: principal supervisor of Maulik Suryavanshi (completed); Title of the research project: network traffic analysis.
  4. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Yongcheng Wang (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: An Online Tool to Refactor Assurance Cases.
  5. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Paul Dumitriu (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Crime Reporting Web Application for York University Students.
  6. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Umeed Stanikzai (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Design and implementation of an ML-powered Virtual Assistant.
  7. 2023/1 - 2023/4: Principal Supervisor of Ying Zhang (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Alge-bros: Development of a web-based learning game for maths.
  8. 2023/1 - 2023/4: Principal Supervisor of Felicia Nip (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Researching, implementing, and demonstrating encryption and decryption methods.
  9. 2022/9 - 2023/4: Principal Supervisor of Michael Koiku (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: CampusFeed: a central information repository for university students, professors, and organizations.
  10. 2022/9 - 2023/4: Principal Supervisor of Harsh Mirpuri (completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: YuRide: a rideshare program concept for Yorku in the post-COVID era.
  11. 2022/9 - 2022/12: Principal Supervisor of Shanshan Gu (completed), York university; Student Degree Expected Date: 2023/6; Thesis/Project Title: Architectural Technical Debt (ATD).
  12. 2022/5 - 2022/8: Principal Supervisor of Yixi Zhao (Completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Evidence-based software engineering: assurance of systematic mapping studies in software engineering
  13. 2022/5 - 2022/8: Principal Supervisor of Roshani Narayanan (Completed), York university; Thesis/Project Title: An NLP-based Data Retrieval plugin to automate scientific literature analysis.
  14. 2022/1 - 2022/4: Principal Supervisor of Yuyu Ren (completed), York university, Student Degree Expected Date: 2023/6; Thesis/Project Title: A tool to design assurance cases.
  15. 2021/9 - 2022/4: Principal Supervisor of Gbemisola Akerele (completed), York university Student Degree Expected Date: 2023/6; Thesis/Project Title: How might a fitness app be accessible for people with disabilities?

Master’s Thesis [n=4]

  1. 2023/1 - 2024/8: Principal Supervisor of Oluwafemi Odu (In Progress), York university; Thesis/Project Title: Using A Large Language Model to automatically generate the pattern-based safety assurance cases of open-source autonomous driving systems.
  2. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Principal Supervisor of Mithila Sivakumar (Completed), York university, Student Degree Expected Date: 2024/4; Thesis/Project Title: design and automatic generation of the safety cases of ML-enabled autonomous driving systems. Mithila successfully defended her MSc thesis on April 3, 2024.
  3. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Principal Supervisor of Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti (Completed), York university Student Degree Expected Date: 2024/4 Thesis/Project Title: Examining the Effectiveness of Generative Artificial Intelligence for the Identification of Defeaters in Assurance Cases; Kimya successfully defended her MSc thesis on April 25, 2024. Her MSc thesis has been recommended for the Best Thesis Award.
  4. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Co-Supervisor of Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer (Completed), York university, Student Degree Expected Date: 2024/4; Thesis/Project Title: A first look at fairness of Machine Learning based code reviewer recommendation; Mohammad successfully defended his MSc thesis on April 10, 2024. His Msc thesis has been recommended for the Best Thesis Award.

PhD student [n=1]

  1. 2023/10 - 2024/03: Supervisor of a PhD candidate (visiting student) named Rajesh Kumar, York university; Thesis/Project Title: using decision trees to automatically generate the implementation of safety cases for autonomous driving systems; Present Position: PhD candidate at the University of Palermo (Italy).

Post-doctorate [n=1]

  1. 2022: Principal Supervisor of Callum Sutherland, York university; Project Title: Broadening participation in computer science for women and underrepresented minority students; Present Position: Associate, Socio-Cultural Research and Assessment, at DPRA Canada.

Selected Oral presentations and related items

  1. Moderator of the panel (conversation café) on EDI held on April 18 at ICSE 2024 in Lisbon (Portugal). Title of the panel: “Making conferences in software engineering more diverse”. List of panelists: Dr. Foutse Khomh, Muneera Bano, Alexander Serebrenik, Emerson Murphy-Hill, and Sonja Hyrynsalmi. List of moderators of the panel: Dr. Alvine Boaye Belle and Dr. Ronnie de Souza.
  2. EDI guest lecturer. Title of the lecture “Embracing the diversity of the intellectual and social landscapes when conducting research in computing or developing intelligent systems: a Dr. Belle’s perspective”. I made that lecture on March 5, 2024 at OntarioTech University. That lecture was sponsored by the Women in Research Council and held in the context of the
    Building EDI knowledge in Research Speaker Series.
  3. Panelist for the career panel in STEM organized in January 2024 by CBSN (Canadian Black Scientist Network). Complete list of panelists: Dr. Eric Lukong, Dr. Alvine Boaye Belle, Benilde Mizero, and Daneille Nadin.
  4. Panelist at the 1st Francophone Day of Women in Computer Science, held in Montreal (Canada). Title of the panel: recruitment of women in the computing field. Complete list of panelists: Sylvie Trudel, Sophia Bennaceur, Alvine Boaye Belle, Leonie Chipot, Sonya Fiset, Christine Jost. May 2023.
  5. Keynote speech entitled “The perks of being a computer scientist”. Delivered at the Bloor Collegiate Institute (Toronto) on February 2023 to kickstart the STEAM Olympics of that institute.
  6. One of the moderators of the Panel of the Black History month webinar series on STEM and Black Wellness in Canada. (2002). Panel organized in the context of the Harriet Tubman Institute Black History month webinar series, Toronto, Canada. List of moderators and panelists: Jude Kong, Alvine B. Belle, Solomon Boakye-Yiadom, Iretomiwa Olukiyesi, Loydie Majewska, and Hugues Kamga
  7. Seminar titled “The perks of being a black female computer scientist”. Seminar I made on December 2022 in the context of the CBSN (Canadian Black Scientist Network) conference series.
  8. Moderator of the Panel of the Black History month webinar series on STEM and Black Wellness in Canada. Event moderated in February 2022 as part of the Harriet Tubman Institute Black History month webinar series.

Mentorship and committee memberships

  1. Since 2024/2: member of the program committee of CASCON (premier academic and industrial conference for advanced studies in computer science and software engineering) 2024
  2. Since 2024/3: Co-chair of the Smart Mobility Governance track of the International Conference on Smart Mobility
  3. Since 2024/4: poster co-chair of ICSE (International conference in software engineering) 2025
  4. Since 2023: General chair of the MoDRE (Model-Driven Requirements Engineering workshop) 2024. MoDRE is an international workshop of the RE (Requirement Engineering) 2024 conference.
  5. Since 2023/9: Committee Member of the Student Experience Priority Planning Group, at York University. As part of this committee, I collaborate with other committee members to pull together strategic LE (Lassonde School of engineering) stakeholders that can contribute towards the group's goal of provide guiding principles and actions for the community that enhance student success, retention, and the student experience within LE.
  6. 2023/8 - 2024/8: Committee Member of the Petitions, Appeals, Reappraisals Committee, York University
  7. 2023/8 - 2024/8: Committee Member of the Planning, Academic Resources & Research (PARR) Committee, York University
  8. Since 2023/10: I am a member of the Canadian Women Academic Leaders in Science and Engineering
  9. Since 2023/8: I am a member of the Equity-Diversity and Inclusion committee of Connected Minds. Connected Minds is supported by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF). Connected Minds consists of transdisciplinary research teams and partners that collectively carry out research activities to develop socially responsible technologies.
  10. Since 2023/8: I am a registered member of Connected Minds. Connected Minds is supported by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF). It consists of transdisciplinary research teams and partners that collectively carry out research activities to develop socially responsible technologies.
  11. 2023/02-2023/12: publicity co-chair of the organizing committee of APSEC (Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference) 2023
  12. 2022/9-2024/05: diversity co-chair of the ICSE* (International conference in software engineering) 2024 organizing committee
  13. 2021/9-2022/05: student volunteer co-chair of the ICSE* (International conference in software engineering) 2022 organizing committee
  14. Since 2022/08: Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) champion of the EECS (electronic, electric and computer science) department
  15. Since 2022/08: committee member of the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Sub-Committee, Lassonde School of Engineering at York university
  16. Since 2022/08: committee member of the engineering search committee, York university
  17. Since 2022: Faculty Advisor for the Summer Work-Integrated Learning held by the Lassonde’s Kindergarten to Industry (k2i) Academy. k2i aims at dismantling systemic barriers by proposing an equitable and inclusive program that strives to diversify the STEM professions from kindergarten to industry.
  18. Since 2022/06: faculty affiliate of the City Institute at York University (CITY)
  19. Since 2022/04: fellow of Bethune College (a collegeaffiliated with Lassonde School of Engineering), Lassonde School of Engineering at York University
  20. Since 2021/10: Mentor of the NSERC Girls System program (https:// girlsystemmentorship.com/ ). That program is the Canada's FIRST STEM-focused professional mentorship platform. It aims to inspire young STEMists and increase women's representation in STEM-related fields by pairing girls in grades 8-12 with professional mentors from a diverse range of fields.
  21. Since 2021/09: I am a faculty affiliate of the Harriet Tubman Institute for research on Africa and its Diasporas. I am part of its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) cluster
  22. 2021/8 – 2022/07: committee Member of the Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WICSE) committee, York University
  23. Since 2021/8: committee Member of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Champions Group, York University
  24. 2021/8 – 2022/07: Committee Member of the Awards & Scholarships committee, York University
  25. 2021/8 – 2022/07: Committee Member of the Website/Communications committee, York University

(*): ICSE is the premier and the largest software engineering conference.