Emna Ksontini

Emna Ksontini is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she applies artificial intelligence and intelligent search techniques to software engineering problems, with a focus on infrastructure as code, program repair, and source code refactoring. She also serves as a Docker Captain at Docker, Inc.
Dr. Ksontini earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Oakland University in Winter 2024, where her doctoral research focused on detecting and refactoring technical debt in software containers. Dr. Ksontini is the recipient of the Most Industry-Ready Research Award at the NSF Industry–University Pervasive AI Conference. She brings hands-on industry experience through her work at Ford, where she contributed to the development of one of the first containerization frameworks for software-defined vehicles.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science & Information, Oakland University — 2024
M.Sc. in Software Engineering, National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) — 2021
B.Sc. in Software Engineering, National Institute of Applied Science and Technology (INSAT) — 2021

Specialization in Teaching

I teach all aspects of software engineering, and also teach specialized courses on Microservices & Cloud Systems.

Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering ( AI4SE )
Software Engineering for Artificial Intelligence Systems ( SE4AI )
Software Engineering for Agentic AI
Software Containerization and Orchestration
Infrastructure as Code and Cloud Automation

Professional Service

Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
Conference Reviewer / Program Committee Member: ICSME 2026; ESEM 2025 (PC Member); SCAM 2025 (PC Member)
Organizing Committee Member: MODELS (2025);ASE (2023)

Honors & Awards

National I-Corps NSF (2024)
The Best Technical Merit Award (2023) During CSE Graduate Research Competition at Oakland University
The Most Industry-ready Research Award (2022, Portland) During NSF Industry-University Pervasive AI