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Alvine B. 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.

Since her arrival at York University in July 2021, Dr. Belle has supervised nearly forty (40) students and postdoctoral researchers and secured nearly ten million in funding as a PI, co-PI and co-applicant. Her funding comes from several organizations such as Connected Minds, CFREF (Canada First Research Excellence Fund), Mitacs, and IDRC (International Development Research Centre).

Dr. Belle currently serves on several international committees. She was a student volunteer co-chair at ICSE 2022. She was part of the APSEC 2023 organization committee. She was part of the ICSE 2024 organizing committee where she served as a diversity co-chair. She was also part of the EASE 2025 research program committee.

Dr. Belle is the reviewer of several high impact factor journals, including the ACM TOSEM (Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology) journal, the Empirical Software Engineering journal, the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles journal, the IEEE Software magazine, 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
  • Safety Assurance
  • Autonomous driving systems Safety
  • Generative AI
  • Knowledge representation and reasoning
  • EDI (Equity-Diversity-Inclusion) in computing

Selected Publications

  1. Oluwafemi Odu, Alvine B. Belle, Song Wang, Segla Kpodjedo, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Hadi Hemmati. (2025). Automatic instantiation of assurance cases from patterns using large language models. Journal of Systems and Software, 112353.
  2. Nima Shiri Harzevili, Alvine Boaye Belle, Junjie Wang, Song Wang, Zhen Ming (Jack) Jiang, Nachiappan Nagappan. (2025). A Systematic Literature Review on Automated Software Vulnerability Detection Using Machine Learning. ACM Computing Surveys, 57(3), 1-36.
  3. Oluwafemi Odu, Alvine B. Belle, Song Wang. LLM-Based Safety Case Generation for Baidu Apollo: Are We There Yet? Accepted by CAIN (International Conference on AI Engineering– Software Engineering for AI) 2025 in ICSE 2025.
  4. Oluwafemi Odu, Daniel Méndez Beltrán, Emiliano Berrones Gutiérrez, Alvine B. Belle, Gerhard Yu, and Melika Sherafat. SmartGSN: an online tool to semi-automatically manage assurance cases. Accepted by SAFECOMP 2025
  5. Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti,  Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer, Alvine B. Belle, Song Wang, Hadi Hemmati. Program Slicing in the Era of Large Language Models. Accepted by COMPSAC 2025.
  6. Mithila Sivakumar, Alvine B. Belle, Jinjun Shan, Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti. (2024). Prompting GPT–4 to support automatic safety case generation. Expert Systems with Applications, 124653.
  7. Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti, Alvine B. Belle, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Ouwafemi Odu, Mithila Sivakumar. (2024). A PRISMA-driven systematic mapping study on system assurance weakeners. Information and Software Technology, 107526.
  8. Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer, Reem Aleithan, Nima Shiri harzevili, Moshi Wei, Alvine B. 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.
  9. Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti, Mithila Sivakumar, Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer, Alvine B. Belle, Song Wang, Timothy C. Lethbridge. (2024). Evaluating the Effectiveness of GPT-4 Turbo in Creating Defeaters for Assurance Cases. Accepted by the FORGE conference (co-located with ICSE 2024).
  10. Alvine B. 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.
  11. Alvine B. Belle, Callum Sutherland, Opeyemi O. Adesina, Segla Kpodjedo, Nathanael Ojong, Lisa Cole. (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.
  12. Zakeya Namrud, Sègla Kpodjedo, Chamseddine Talhi, Ahmed Bali, and Alvine B. Belle. (2021). Deep learning Based Android Anomaly Detection Using a combination of vulnerabilities dataset. Applied Sciences, 11(16), 7538; doi:10.3390/app11167538
  13. Opeyemi O. Adesina, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Stéphane S. Somé, Vahdat Abdelzad, and Alvine B. Belle. (2018). Improving Formal Analysis of State Machines with Particular Emphasis on And-Cross Transitions. Computer Languages, Systems & Structures, 54, 544-585.
  14. Alvine B. 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.
  15. Alvine B. Belle, Ghizlane El Boussaidi, and Segla Kpodjedo. (2016). Combining lexical and structural information to reconstruct software layers. Information and Software Technology, 74, 1-16.
  16. Alvine B. 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

Post-doctorate [n=3]

  1. 2025-2027: co-supervisor of Dr. Henry Nwokoye, York University. Project title: When people talk, listen carefully: Investigating privacy and ethical concerns with assistive technologies from the perspective of individuals with lived experience.
  2. 2025-2027: Principal supervisor of Dr. Soude Ghari, York University. Project title: Developing Socially Responsible LLM-Based AI for Early Detection of Hypertension and Cardiac Risk Factors in Black Women.
  3. 2022: Principal Supervisor of Dr. 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.

PhD student [n=1]

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

Master’s Thesis [n=7]

  1. 2025/9 - 2027/4: Principal Supervisor of Khoa Bùi, York University; MSc Thesis/Project Title: When People Talk, Listen Carefully: developing assistive technologies from the perspective of individuals with speech impairment.
  2. 2025/9 - 2027/4: Principal Supervisor of Joseph Isedowo, York University; MSc Thesis/Project Title: Fine-tuning Large Language Models to support real-time fraud detection in the financial sector.
  3. 2025/1 - 2026/8: Principal Supervisor of Gerhard Yu (in progress), York University; MSc Thesis/Project Title: Using Large Language Models to Automatically Review Assurance Cases.
  4. 2023/1 - 2024/12: Principal Supervisor of Oluwafemi Odu (Completed); York university; Thesis/Project Title: Automatic Instantiation of Assurance Cases from Patterns Using Large Language Models. Oluwafemi successfully defended his MSc thesis on Dec. 2024. His MSc thesis has been recommended for the Best Thesis Award. Present position: production support engineer at Marqeta
  5. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Principal Supervisor of Mithila Sivakumar (Completed); York University; 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. Present position: PhD student at the University of Ottawa and Mitacs trainee at eSentire.
  6. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Principal Supervisor of Kimya Khakzad Shahandashti (Completed); York University;  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. Present Position: Software engineer at Huntr.
  7. 2022/9 - 2024/4: Co-Supervisor of Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer (Completed); York University; 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. Present Position: Senior Machine Learning Engineer at LRQA.

Bachelor’s [n=28]

  1. 2025/09-2025/12: principal supervisor of Rayan Al Dajani (ongoing). Title of the research project: Health AI: an all-in-one AI-powered mobile application for fitness and nutrition tracking.
  2. 2025/07-2025/10: principal supervisor of Ethan Ngo (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: SmartGSN: A Generative AI-powered Approach to Automatically Detect Assurance Case Patterns in Assurance Cases. Project sponsored by the Mitacs Globalink program.
  3. 2025/06 – 2025/09: principal supervisor of Alexis Lavigne (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: SmartGSN: A Generative AI-powered Approach to Automatically Detect Assurance Case Patterns in Assurance Cases. Project sponsored by the Mitacs Globalink program.
  4. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Mhd Ryiad Almohamad Alelaioy (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: Development of an LLM-based persona to instantiate assurance cases from patterns.
  5. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Ursanne Kengne (completed). Title of the research project: Development of an LLM-based persona to instantiate assurance cases from patterns.
  6. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Nargis Rafie (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: An LLM-based Agentic Approach to Automatically Assess the Confidence of Assurance Cases.
  7. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Sukaina Habib (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: Implementation of a job recruitment plug-in using an LLM-based agent. Present Position: Software developer at BMO.
  8. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Cat (Chloe) Nguyen (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: CiteFairly: detecting and mitigating affiliation bias in computing literature. Current position: intern at the City of Toronto.
  9. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Khadija Aftab (completed). York University; Thesis/Project Title: (EECS 4070): CiteFairly: detecting and mitigating gendered citation biases in computing literature. Current position: senior cybersecurity analyst at Banque Scotia.
  10. 2025/05 – 2025/08: principal supervisor of Amanuel Aknaw (completed); Title of the research project: CiteFairly: detecting and mitigating gendered citation biases in computing literature. Project sponsored by Connected Minds. Amanuel has received a USRA award to work on this project.
  11. 2024/05 – 2025/04: principal supervisor of Karolina Tchilinguirova (completed); Title of the research project: CiteFairly: detecting and mitigating gendered citation biases in computing literature. Project sponsored by Connected Minds. Karolina has received the LURA award to work on this project. Current position: Data Analytics Intern at Hydro One.
  12. 2024/08 – 2024/10: principal supervisor of Daniel Méndez Beltrán (completed); Title of the summer research project: An online tool to refactor the safety assurance cases of autonomous driving systems. Project sponsored by the Mitacs Globalink program. Present Position: Lead Tester at Santander México.
  13. 2024/07 – 2024/09: principal supervisor of Emiliano Berrones Gutiérrez (completed); Title of the summer research project: An online tool to refactor the safety assurance cases of autonomous driving systems. Project sponsored by the Mitacs Globalink program. Present Position: IP engineer at Huawei Enterprise México.
  14. 2024/05 – 2024/08: principal supervisor of Melika Sherafat (completed); Title of the project: Automatic Detection of Assurance Case Patterns in Assurance Cases.
  15. 2024/01 – 2024/04: principal supervisor of Gouled Mahamud (completed); Title of the research project: CiteFAIR: detecting citation biases in computing literature. Present Position: Student at York University.
  16. 2024/01 – 2024/04: principal supervisor of Maulik Suryavanshi (completed); Title of the research project: network traffic analysis; Present Position: Computer Systems Analyst at Covetus.
  17. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Yongcheng Wang (completed), York University; Thesis/Project Title: An Online Tool to Refactor Assurance Cases; Present Position: Student at York University.
  18. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Paul Dumitriu (completed), York University; Thesis/Project Title: Crime Reporting Web Application for York University Students; Present Position: Technical analyst at Tacit.
  19. 2023/05-2023/08: principal supervisor of Umeed Stanikzai (completed), York University; Thesis/Project Title: Design and implementation of an ML-powered Virtual. Present position: founder (CEO) of the AI-based company called VBot.
    Assistant.
  20. 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; Present Position: Software developer at RBC.
  21. 2023/1 - 2023/4: Principal Supervisor of Felicia Nip (completed), York University; Thesis/Project Title: Researching, implementing and demonstrating encryption and decryption methods; Present Position: Student at York University.
  22. 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; Present Position: Software engineer II at Marqeta.
  23. 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; Present Position: Cyber Security Analyst at Intact Financial Corp.
  24. 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); Present Position: Student at York University.
  25. 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; Yixi has received the LURA award to work on this project. Present Position: MSc student at the University of Waterloo, and intern at Blackberry.
  26. 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; Present Position: Yorku alumni.
  27. 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; Present Position: MSc Student at the University of Toronto.
  28. 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? Present Position: Technology developer analyst at Accenture since January 2024.

Selected Oral presentations and related items

  1. Guest Lecturer. March 2025. Title of the in-person lecture: “Generative AI is All You Need: using LLMs to automate software engineering (SE) tasks”. Lecture delivered in the context of the EECS 6414 - Data visualization and analytics course taught by Professor Jarek Gryz. Toronto, Canada
  2. Presenter at a seminar. March 2025. In-person Seminar held in the context of the speaker series called “Coffee with Profs: Spotlight on Research” that is organized by Professor Kathryn Allyn and that offers a forum to discuss research with students from Bethune College. Toronto, Canada.
  3. Panelist for the CUCAI (Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI 2025) 2025 panel on Responsible AI. March 2025. The in-person panel was organized by Dr. Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari. The three panelists were: Dr. Alvine B. Belle (myself), Dr. Sana Maqsood and Dr. Teshager Dagne. The panel was moderated by a postdoc named Abeer Badawi. Toronto, Canada.
  4. Keynote speaker. February 2025. Title of the in-person keynote speech: AI needs you: Inspiring Black Youth to Dream, Create, and Innovate in AI. 28th City of Markham/MACCA Black History Month Recognition Ceremony, Markham, Canada.
  5. Keynote speaker. November 2024. Title of the in-person keynote speech: Success is not a myth: let's build it! IBET conference 2024, Markham, Canada.
  6. Presenter at a seminar. May 2024. Humanity 101 for cyber-physical systems. CIRC (Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Cluster) seminar series, Toronto, Canada.
  7. Presenter at an in-person event. October 2024. Introduction to the research on the safety assurance of ML-enabled Autonomous Driving Systems. Path2STEM and SHSM in STEM event organized by k2i (kindergarten to industry) at York University, Toronto, Canada.
  8. Keynote speaker. March 2024. Embracing the diversity of the intellectual and social landscapes when conducting research in computing or developing intelligent systems: a Dr. Belle’s perspective. Women in Research Council (Building EDI knowledge in Research Speaker Series, Oshawa, Canada. I made that in-person lecture 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.
  9. Moderator of the in-person 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.
  10. 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.
  11. Panelist at the 1st Francophone Day of Women in Computer Science, held in Montreal (Canada). Title of the in-person 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.
  12. In-person 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.
  13. 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
  14. 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.
  15. 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. List of panelists and moderators: Alvine Boaye Belle, Jude Kong, Solomon Boakye-Yiadom, Iretomiwa Olukiyesi, Loydie Majewska, Hugues Kamga. (2022). Panel of the Black History month webinar series on STEM and Black Wellness in Canada. Harriet Tubman Institute Black History month webinar series, Toronto, Canada.

Event administration

  1. 2025/06-2025/11: General co-chair of the CSER (Consortium for Software Engineering Research) 2025 Fall meeting held at York University, Toronto.
  2. Since 2024/12: Co-chair of the Connected Minds 2025 conference (Co-chair of the Connected Minds 2025 Symposium titled “Large Language Models applications and risks”)
  3. 2025/01-2025/05: Session Chair of Lunch area for SEs (software engineers and scientists) of East Asians to meet each other (part of Social, Networking and Special Rooms). This is part of the EDI (Equity, diversity and Inclusion)-related social events held at ICSE* 2025.
  4. 2025/01-2025/05: Session Chair of Lunch area for SEs (software engineers and scientists) of African descent to meet each other (part of Social, Networking and Special Rooms). This is part of the EDI (Equity, diversity and Inclusion)-related social events held at ICSE 2025.
  5. 2025/01-2025/05: Session Chair of Break area for SEs (software engineers and scientists) who speak French to meet each other (part of ICSE 2025 Social, Networking and Special Rooms). This is part of the EDI (Equity, diversity and Inclusion) plans promoted by ICSE 2025.
  6. 2024/12 – 2025/5: Co-chair of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) event held at ICSE 2025
  7. 2024/3 – 2024/9: Co-chair of the Smart Mobility Governance track of the International Conference on Smart Mobility
  8. 2024/3 – 2024/9: Session chair of the "Autonomous Vehicles" track of the International Conference on Smart Mobility 2024
  9. Since 2024/4 -2025/5: poster co-chair of ICSE (International conference in software engineering) 2025
  10. 2023-2024: General chair of the MoDRE (Model-Driven Requirements Engineering workshop) 2024. MoDRE is an international workshop of the RE (Requirement Engineering) 2024 conference.
  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 ICSE* (International conference in software engineering) 2024
  13. 2021/9-2022/05: student volunteer co-chair of the ICSE* (International conference in software engineering) 2022
  14. 2022/08-2023/08: Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) champion of the EECS (electronic, electric and computer science) department of York University.

(*): ICSE is the premier and the largest software engineering conference. It provides an opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and concerns in the software engineering field.