Research

My research interests lie in the intersection of systems and software engineering. I am especially intrigued by how emergent behaviors can occur and impact the correctness of systems and how we can enable systems to detect and react to such behaviors through software. Recently, I have found a home in studying autonomous vehicles (AVs). AVs rely on a solid foundation in this intersection of system and software; they are safety-critical systems comprised of multiple smaller systems that coordinate the global behavior through software. I have been investigating how we can enable AVs to detect, reason, and react to emergent behaviors.

You might also find more about my research on:

Google Scholar
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Research Experience

 
 
 
 
 
NC State
Assistant Teaching Professor
Aug 2023 – Present Raleigh, NC
 
 
 
 
 
Center for Embedded and Cyber-physical Systems @ UCI
Research Assistant
Sep 2018 – Jun 2023 Irvine, CA
Part of the Dutt Research Group, where I explored how applications behave when emergent behaviors occur and how we can detect, reason, and react to these unexpected system actions. My work aimed to enable systems to be proactive about these emerging behaviors to maintain safe execution during runtime.
 
 
 
 
 
Software Engineering Lab @ UnB
Research Assistant
Aug 2016 – Aug 2018 Brasília, Brazil
Conducted research with Prof. Genaína Rodrigues on reliable systems, by exploring different ways to analyze implied scenarios in distributed systems. Our proposed methodology uses clustering techniques, with a distance metric based on the Smith-Waterman algorithm. I wrote a senior monograph and a master’s thesis on the subject, and we published our reults in the Journal of Systems and Software.
 
 
 
 
 
Lab for Informatics and Data Mining @ Fordham University
Research Assistant
Jun 2016 – Aug 2016 New York, NY
Worked on the WATSHERE project, led by Prof. Frank Hsu. We used the IBM Watson framework to provide curated information for students’ parents and staff of the P.S. 85 in the Bronx. We published the results of this work at the 2017 Global Business and Technology Association conference.

Publications

Journal Articles

[J4] SAFER: Safety Assurances For Emergent Behavior

Caio Batista de Melo, Marzieh Ashrafiamiri, Minjun Seo, Fadi Kurdahi, and Nikil Dutt ;
Appeared at the IEEE Design & Test, 2023.

[J3] LOCoCAT: Low-Overhead Classification of CAN Bus Attack Types

Caio Batista de Melo and Nikil Dutt ;
Appeared at the IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, 2023.

[J2] The Self-Aware Information Processing Factory Paradigm for Mixed-Critical Multiprocessing

Eberle A. Rambo, Bryan Donyanavard, Minjun Seo, Florian Maurer, Thawra M. Kadeed, Caio B. de Melo, Biswadip Maity, Anmol Surhonne, Andreas Herkersdorf, Fadi Kurdahi, Nikil D. Dutt, and Rolf Ernst ;
Appeared at the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 2020.

[J1] Characterization of Implied Scenarios as Families of Common Behavior

Caio Batista de Melo, André Luiz Fernandes Cançado, and Genaína Nunes Rodrigues ;
Appeared at the Journal of Systems and Software, 2019.

Peer-reviewed Conferences

[C3] Information Processing Factory 2.0 - Self-awareness for Autonomous Collaborative Systems

Nora Sperling, Alex Bendrick, Dominik Stöhrmann, Rolf Ernst, Bryan Donyanavard, Florian Maurer, Oliver Lenke, Anmol Surhonne, Andreas Herkersdorf, Walaa Amer, Caio Batista de Melo, Ping-Xiang Chen, Quang Anh Hoang, Rachid Karami, Biswadip Maity, Paul Nikolian, Mariam Rakka, Dongjoo Seo, Saehanseul Yi, Minjun Seo, Nikil Dutt, and Fadi Kurdahi;
Appeared at the 2023 DATE conference.

[C2] The Information Processing Factory: A Paradigm for Life Cycle Management of Dependable System

Eberle A. Rambo, Thawra Kadeed, Rolf Ernst, Minjun Seo, Fadi Kurdahi, Bryan Donyanavard, Caio Batista de Melo, Biswadip Maity, Kasra Moazzemi, Kenneth Stewart, Saehanseul Yi, Amir M. Rahmani, Nikil Dutt, Florian Maurer, Nguyen Anh Vu Doan, Anmol Surhonne, Thomas Wild, and Andreas Herkersdorf ;
Appeared at the 2019 CODES+ISSS conference.

[C1] WATSHERE: A Watson Cognitive System to Navigate Social/Health Resources for Public Schools

Anna Poulakas, Alon Yoeli, Sebastian Deossa, Caio Batista de Melo, D. Frank Hsu, Dawn J. Adams, Cesarina Javier, and Anita V. Batisti ;
Appeared at the 2017 Global Business and Technology Association (GBATA) conference.

Book Chapters

[BC1] Reflecting on Self-aware Systems-on-Chip

Bryan Donyanavard, Tiago Mück, Kasra Moazzemi, Biswadip Maity, Caio Batista de Melo, Kenneth Stewart, Saehanseul Yi, Amir M. Rahmani, and Nikil Dutt ;
Part of A Journey of Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems. Springer, 2021.

Technical Reports

[R1] The Information Processing Factory: Organization, Terminology, and Definitions

Eberle A. Rambo, Bryan Donyanavard, Minjun Seo, Florian Maurer, Thawra Kadeed, Caio B. de Melo, Biswadip Maity, Anmol Surhonne, Andreas Herkersdorf, Fadi J. Kurdahi, Nikil D. Dutt, and Rolf Ernst ;
Available at arXiv:1907.01578.

Presentations

LOCoCAT: Low-Overhead Classification of CAN Bus Attack Types

Caio Batista de Melo, Nikil Dutt ;
Late-Breaking Track at the International Conference on Compilers, Architectures, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems, 2023.

Characterization of Implied Scenarios as Families of Common Behavior

Caio Batista de Melo, André Luiz Fernandes Cançado, and Genaína Nunes Rodrigues ;
Journal-First Track at the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, 2020.

The Information Processing Factory

Kenneth Stewart, Caio Batista de Melo, Saehanseul Yi, and Nikil Dutt ;
Poster at the 1st UCI/UCR/UPHF International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems and their Applications in Intelligent and Connected Transportation System, 2019.

Self-Aware Systems-On-Chip

Kenneth Stewart, Caio Batista de Melo, Saehanseul Yi, and Nikil Dutt ;
Poster at the Richard Newton Young Fellow Forum at the Design Automation Conference, 2019.

The Information Processing Factory

Kenneth Stewart, Caio Batista de Melo, Saehanseul Yi, and Nikil Dutt ;
Poster at the Richard Newton Young Fellow Forum at the Design Automation Conference, 2019.

Implied Scenario Detection Oriented Dependability Analysis

Caio Batista de Melo and Genaína Nunes Rodrigues ;
Poster at the joint 23rd University of Brasilia/14th Federal District Undergraduate Research Workshop, 2017.

Service

Mentoring

UCI Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Research Discovery

Mentor (Winter ‘22 - Spring ‘22)
Mentored a total of four UCI undergraduate students that wanted to learn more about research, how projects work, and how they could start finding opportuinities.

Global Research Experience in Artificial Intelligence (GREAT) Program

Mentor (Winter ‘22)
Mentored a total of three undergraduate exchange students across two active research projects. Throughout this program I met regularly with these students and helped them get up to speed with the projects, and set them up to a position where they could contribute significantly.

Peer-Reviewer

International Conference on Omni-layer Intelligent Systems (COINS)

2023

International Conference on Hardware/Software Codesign and System Synthesis (CODES+ISSS)

2019, 2021, 2022

Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE)

2021, 2022

Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)

2022

International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID)

2021