Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Doctoral student
Mikael is currently a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the School of Innovation, Design, and Technique (IDT), Division of Networked and Embedded Systems (NES) at Mälardalen University, Sweden. His PhD studies are funded by the VeriDevOps EU and SmartDelta projects, and he is supervised by Prof. Eduard Paul Enoiu, Prof. Cristina Seceleanu, and Prof. Wasif Afzal.
He holds a Licentiate degree in Computer Science from Mälardalen University with a thesis on "Enabling Test Automation for Industrial PLC Programs", and an MSc in IT Engineering (Computer Networks) from Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Campus, where he achieved a GPA of 94.7/100 and ranked second among top IT engineering students. Mikael also has a B.Sc. in Computer Software Engineering from the same university.
Mikael's research centers on automating testing for Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programs using search-based algorithms, and he has published several papers in this domain. His expertise includes automated AI test case generation for for PLCs, network security, malware detection, and SDN. He is proficient in testing and programing both PLC and Python.
Mikael is particularly interested in the collaboration between industry and academia in Sweden, applying his research to real-world industrial use cases with ABB Ports and Marine. He also contributes as a teaching and lab assistant in different courses at Mälardalen University. Additionally, Mikael reviews conference and journal papers on testing embedded systems and requirement engineering.
Mikael is proficient in English, holding an IELTS score of 7.0, and has a strong teamwork spirit. He has worked in various private and public sector companies in IT and economic affairs. His contributions have been recognized with numerous commendations, including from the Mayor of Mashhad for his work in the Municipality of Mashhad, Iran.
- Collaborations with Journals and Conferences as a reviewer:
1- Journal of Software and Systems Modeling, 2024
2- The 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automation of Software Test (AST 2023)
3- SecDevOps 2023: Notes on Software Engineering Methods and CyberSecurity in a DevOps Environment (PC Member)
4- The 17th IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics (SOLI 2023)
-Teaching Experience:
1- Lab Assistant in "Data Structures, Algorithms and Program Development with Python" (DVA245) course at Malardalen University; Sweden, 2022-2024.
2- Teaching Assistant in "Research Methods in Computer Science" (DVA463) course at Malardalen University; Sweden, 2022-2023.
Mikael's interested fields of research are:
-Automated Testing of Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Software
-Automated Test Case Generation for Embedded Systems specially PLCs
-Search-based Testing for PLCs
-Static verification of PLC programs
-Static analysis of PLC programs
-Industrial Control Systems (ICS)
-Malware Detection in Computer Networks especially IoT and SDN
-Network Security
-Catching Bugs using Formal Methods
-Fuzzing
-Networked and Embedded Systems
-Model-checking
-Malware Detection by analyzing the network flows
-IoT/IIoT Security
-SDN
PyLC+: A Scalable Python Framework for Automated Translation and Testing of Industrial PLC Programs (Jul 2025) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Alessio Bucaioni, Wasif Afzal, Cristina Seceleanu 49th IEEE International Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications ( COMPSAC-2025)
An Empirical Investigation of Requirements Engineering and Testing Utilizing EARS Notation in PLC Programs (Mar 2025) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Wasif Afzal, Cristina Seceleanu Springer Nature Computer Science (SNCS)
Automating Test Generation of Industrial Control Software through a PLC-to-Python Translation Framework and Pynguin (Feb 2024) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Cristina Seceleanu, Wasif Afzal 30th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC2023)
An Experiment in Requirements Engineering and Testing using EARS Notation for PLC Systems (May 2023) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Wasif Afzal, Cristina Seceleanu 19th Workshop on Advances in Model Based Testing (A-MOST 2023)
PyLC: A Framework for Transforming and Validating PLC Software using Python and Pynguin Test Generator (Apr 2023) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Wasif Afzal, Cristina Seceleanu SAC2023, The 38th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC 2023)
Choosing a Test Automation Framework for Programmable Logic Controllers in CODESYS Development Environment (May 2022) Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Paul Enoiu, Wasif Afzal, Cristina Seceleanu NEXTA 2022 - 5th International Workshop on the Next Level of Test Automation (NEXTA)