Staff Profiles

PhD in Computer Science – University of Klagenfurt, Austria

• Area of specialization:  Software Engineering

Prof. Yirsaw Ayalew is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Botswana. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Klagenfurt, Austria with a specialization in Software Engineering. His research interests include software testing and debugging, end user software engineering, requirements engineering, software maintenance, software process improvement and software engineering for healthcare systems.  More specifically, his work examines the development of techniques and tools to support end users in testing and debugging their programs; frameworks for assessing maintainability of systems; adaptable software process assessment and improvement frameworks for small software companies; and information systems for effective healthcare service delivery.

He serves as member of organizing and programme committees of many international conferences such as 2nd African Conference on Software Engineering and Applied Computing, 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering- Software Engineering Education Track, IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering, and ACM/IEEE Symposium on Software Engineering in Africa (now African Conference on Software Engineering). Currently, he is a reviewer for journals such as IEEE Access, African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education and International Journal of Software Engineering, Technology and Applications.

• Software Engineering
• Databases
• Programming

• Software testing and debugging
• End user software engineering
• Requirements engineering
• Software maintenance
• Software process improvement
• Software engineering for healthcare systems
• Computing education

• Software process improvement
• Software process assessment (process mining, software analytics, etc.)
• Semi-automated image annotation
• Application of Blockchain in requirements traceability
• Software engineering for healthcare systems
• other related areas

1. Yirsaw Ayalew, Barbara Moeng and Gontlafetse Mosweunyane (2019), Experimental evaluation of ontology-based HIV/AIDS frequently asked question retrieval system, Health Informatics Journal, Vol. 25(4), pp. 1434–1450, 2019, SAGE Publishers
2. M. Tuape, Y. Ayalew , Factors Affecting Development Process in Small Software Companies, IEEE/ACM Symposium on Software Engineering in Africa (Co-located with 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering), pp. 16-23, May 25-31, 2019, Canada
3. Y. Ayalew, E. Tshukudu, M. Lefoane (2018), Factors Affecting Programming Performance of First Year Students at a University in Botswana, African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, Vol. 22, No. 3, 363-373, Publisher: Routledge Taylor & Francis
4. Y. Ayalew and Kris Motlhala (2014), “Software Process Practices in Small Software Companies”, 14th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA 2014), June 30-July 4, 2014, Portugal