ITUAI Seminar Series – Prof. Ali Babar

We are excited to announce that our next speaker in ITU AI Seminar series is Prof. Ali Babar.

Title: AI-Powered Software Security: Understanding and Addressing Data Quality Challenges

Onsite Event: 30 January 2025, 11:00 - 12:00, Istanbul Technical University, Ayazaga Campus, Faculty of Computer & Informatics Engineering, Z18 Lecture Hall

Abstract

The growing integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into software security raises a fundamental question: How trustworthy are the models that claim to predict vulnerabilities in code? While recent advances in deep learning have achieved impressive results, their performance and reliability are often constrained not only by model design but also by the quality and balance of the data they learn from. This talk will share our research efforts aimed at understanding and addressing data-centric problems that can have a negative impact on the performance, robustness, and trustworthiness of AI-powered software vulnerability prediction. I’ll share some of the key challenges that can make AI models’ results unreliable and some solutions to address the increasingly known security data quality problems. The talk concludes by highlighting the importance and opportunities of data-centric solutions for advancing AI in software security, showing how high-quality, diverse, and well-curated data can drive more practical, robust, and trustworthy vulnerability prediction systems.

Short Bio

Ali Babar is a Professor in the School of Computer Science, Adelaide University, Australia. He is a visiting professor (part-time) with the Ozyegin University, Turkey. He is a co-founder and Chief Inspiration Officer (CIO) of a startup, Elevexai Systems, focused on consulting and engineering of AI-Native Secure and Scale software. Most recently, he was a theme leader on architecture and platform for security as service in Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC), a large initiative funded by the Australian government, industry, and research institutes. Professor Babar was the technical lead of one of the largest projects on “Software Security” in the ANZEC region funded by the CSCRC. Software Security with Focus on Critical Infrastructure, SOCRATES, brings more than 75 researchers and practitioners from 10 organizations for developing and evaluating novel knowledge and AI-based platforms, methods, and tools for software security. After joining Univeristy of Adelaide in 2013, Prof. Babar established an interdisciplinary research group called CREST, Centre for Research on Engineering Software Technologies, where he leads the research, development and education activities of more than 20 researchers and engineers in the areas of Engineering of AI-Native Software Systems, AI Ready Data, Software Security and Privacy, and Human-AI collaboration. Professor Babar has authored/co-authored more than 340 peer-reviewed research papers at premier Software journals and conferences. Professor Babar obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the school of computer science and engineering of University of New South Wales, Australia. He also holds a M.Sc. degree in Computing Sciences from University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. More information on Professor Babar can be found at https://alibabar.net.

Google Scholar

Elevex AI Systems