I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL) and lab on Maintenance, Construction and Intelligence of Software (MCIS) at Queen’s University, conducting research in Software Engineering and mentoring students under the supervision of Dr. Ahmed E. Hassan and Dr. Bram Adams. Before joining Queen’s University, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2024 under the supervision of Dr. Cor-Paul Bezemer.

Research Interests

Publications

For the most up-to-date list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar page.

Preprints

15. Agent READMEs: An Empirical Study of Context Files for Agentic Coding. Worawalan Chatlatanagulchai, Hao Li, Yutaro Kashiwa, Brittany Reid, Kundjanasith Thonglek, Pattara Leelaprute, Arnon Rungsawang, Bundit Manaskasemsak, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan, Hajimu Iida. PDF BibTeX

14. Agentic Refactoring: An Empirical Study of AI Coding Agents. Kosei Horikawa, Hao Li, Yutaro Kashiwa, Bram Adams, Hajimu Iida, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

13. HAFixAgent: History-Aware Automated Program Repair Agent. Yu Shi, Hao Li, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

12. An Empirical Study of Testing Practices in Open Source AI Agent Frameworks and Agentic Applications. Mohammed Mehedi Hasan, Hao Li, Emad Fallahzadeh, Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

11. Understanding Prompt Management in GitHub Repositories: A Call for Best Practices. Hao Li, Hicham Masri, Filipe R. Cogo, Abdul Ali Bangash, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

10. From Hugging Face to GitHub: Tracing License Drift in the Open-Source AI Ecosystem. James Jewitt, Hao Li, Bram Adams, Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

9. On the Use of Agentic Coding: An Empirical Study of Pull Requests on GitHub. Miku Watanabe, Hao Li, Yutaro Kashiwa, Brittany Reid, Hajimu Iida, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

8. Agentic Software Engineering: Foundational Pillars and a Research Roadmap. Ahmed E. Hassan, Hao Li, Dayi Lin, Bram Adams, Tse-Hsun Chen, Yutaro Kashiwa, Dong Qiu. PDF BibTeX

7. The Rise of AI Teammates in Software Engineering (SE) 3.0: How Autonomous Coding Agents Are Reshaping Software Engineering. Hao Li, Haoxiang Zhang, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

6. On the Effect of Token Merging on Pre-trained Models for Code. Mootez Saad, Hao Li, Tushar Sharma, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

5. Model Context Protocol (MCP) at First Glance: Studying the Security and Maintainability of MCP Servers. Mohammed Mehedi Hasan, Hao Li, Emad Fallahzadeh, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

4. Can We Recycle Our Old Models? An Empirical Evaluation of Model Selection Mechanisms for AIOps Solutions. Yingzhe Lyu, Hao Li, Heng Li, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

3. A Systematic Literature Review of Software Engineering Research on Jupyter Notebook. Md Saeed Siddik, Hao Li, Cor-Paul Bezemer. PDF BibTeX

2. SwarmUpdate: Hierarchical Software Updates and Deep Learning Model Patching for Heterogeneous UAV Swarms. Lin Geng, Hao Li, Sidney Givigi, Bram Adams. PDF BibTeX

1. Towards Refining Developer Questions using LLM-Based Named Entity Recognition for Developer Chatroom Conversations. Pouya Fathollahzadeh, Mariam El Mezouar, Hao Li, Ying Zou, Ahmed E. Hassan. PDF BibTeX

Journal Articles

4. Studying the Impact of TensorFlow and PyTorch Bindings on Machine Learning Software Quality. Hao Li, Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur, Cor-Paul Bezemer. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 2024. PDF BibTeX

3. Bridging the Language Gap: An Empirical Study of Bindings for Open Source Machine Learning Libraries Across Software Package Ecosystems. Hao Li, Cor-Paul Bezemer. Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), 2024. PDF BibTeX

2. Keeping Deep Learning Models in Check: A History-Based Approach to Mitigate Overfitting. Hao Li, Gopi Krishnan Rajbahadur, Dayi Lin, Cor-Paul Bezemer, Zhen Ming (Jack) Jiang. IEEE Access, 2024. PDF BibTeX

1. An Empirical Study of Yanked Releases in the Rust Package Registry. Hao Li, Filipe R. Cogo, Cor-Paul Bezemer. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 2023. PDF BibTeX

Conference Papers

1. Software Engineering and Foundation Models: Insights from Industry Blogs Using a Jury of Foundation Models. Hao Li, Cor-Paul Bezemer, Ahmed E. Hassan. IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP), 2025. PDF BibTeX

Academic Services

Organizing Committee

• Mining Challenge Co‐Chair, 23rd International Mining Software Repositories Conference (MSR 2026), Mining Challenge Track, April 16–17, 2026 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Link

Program Committee

• Program Committee Member, 34th ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2026), Student Research Competition Track, July 5–9, 2026 (Montreal, Canada). Link
• Program Committee Member, 33rd edition of the IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER 2026), Short Papers and Posters Track & Industrial Track, March 17–20, 2026 (Limassol, Cyprus). Link
• Program Committee Member, 2nd ACM International Conference on AI-powered Software (AIware 2025), Benchmark & Dataset Track, November 19–20, 2025 (Seoul, South Korea). Link
• Program Committee Member, 35th International Conference on Collaborative Advances in Software and COmputiNg (CASCON 2025), Poster Track, November 10–13, 2025 (Toronto, ON, Canada). Link
• Program Committee Member, 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2024), Artifact Evaluation Track, October 27–November 1, 2024 (Sacramento, California, United States). Link

Journal Reviewer

• IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
• ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
• Springer Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)
• Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software (JSS)
• Nature Scientific Data
• Springer Software Quality Journal
• IEEE Software
• Elsevier Patterns
• PeerJ Computer Science

Invited Talks

• Software Engineering and Foundation Models: Insights from Industry Blogs Using a Jury of Foundation Models, Invited talk at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), June 4, 2025 (Nara, Japan).
• Foundation Models and Software Engineering: Insights from Industry Blogs, Invited talk at the AIware Leadership Bootcamp 2024, November 3, 2024 (Toronto, ON, Canada). Slides Video Link