Giuseppe Destefanis

Dr Giuseppe Destefanis is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University College London (UCL), where he is part of the Financial Computing & Analytics group, and Co-Head of the London SmartBridgeLab.

His research covers Empirical Software Engineering, Mining Software Repositories, Large Language Models, and Blockchain technologies. He focuses on improving software quality and the developer experience, and on examining how new AI tools can support software engineering and be integrated into organisational practice.

In Empirical Software Engineering, he investigates the interaction between technical, human, and socio-economic factors in software development, treating software projects as complex socio-technical systems. He applies data mining, machine learning, and time series analysis to software repositories. This work follows two connected lines: analysing source code for metrics and recurring patterns, and examining developer communications to study human factors. These strands provide evidence for improving productivity and software quality, and have led to collaborations with technology companies.

In Blockchain, Giuseppe has contributed to research on smart contracts and the use of distributed ledger technologies in the financial sector, offering perspectives of interest to both policy makers and institutions considering adoption.