PhD Student (Fall 2026)

Are you passionate about building practical tools for developers, mining large-scale software repositories, or advancing the capabilities of program analysis? Join us at the SANAD Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi for a fully funded PhD in Software Engineering.

We are seeking motivated PhD students to join our research team, co-led by Sarah Nadi and Karim Ali. The SANAD Lab (Software Analysis and Developer Support) focuses on building scalable, precise, and actionable tools that improve how developers write, understand, and maintain software. PhD students will be supervised by Sarah or Karim, or can opt for joint co-supervision.

Our Current Research Themes

PhD students will have the opportunity to contribute to and shape projects in areas such as:

  • Dependency management and software supply chain (e.g., API version updates, library migration, API misuse)
  • Assessing and improving correctness of LLM-generated code
  • Smart contract security
  • Software energy efficiency
  • Program analysis for detecting security vulnerabilities
  • Scalable and precise pointer analysis

Why Join SANAD?

  • A collaborative research group with access to state-of-the-art computing resources
  • A track record of publications at top venues (ICSE, FSE, ASE, ICSME, TSE, MSR, EMSE, OOPSLA, ISSTA, etc.)
  • Opportunities for mentorship, international collaboration, and research visits
  • Generous funding package
  • Living in one of the safest and sought after cities in the world, Abu Dhabi, and working in our beautiful Saadiyat campus

About the Position

  • Location: NYU Abu Dhabi (UAE)
  • Start Date: Fall 2026
  • Duration: 4 years (full-time, funded)
  • Supervisors: Sarah Nadi and/or Karim Ali
  • Application Deadline: December 1, 2025 (tentative). Please apply to Tandon and/or Courant

Ideal Candidate

  • A strong background in software engineering, programming languages, or security
  • Experience in static/dynamic analysis, mining software repositories, or AI for code is a plus
  • Proficient in Python, Java, or Swift/C/C++
  • Demonstrated research potential (e.g., thesis, publications, open-source contributions)

How to Indicate your Interest in this Position

Submit an application to our internal lab application system. Please indicate whether you’re particularly interested in working with Dr. Nadi, Dr. Ali, or are interested in co-supervision. Note that this does NOT replace the need to apply to NYU’s application system above. This is a way to indicate your interest to us without directly emailing us.