About Me

Hi, I am a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Virginia (UVA), advised by Prof. Matthew B. Dwyer. I am a member of the LESS Lab research group. My research lies at the intersection of software engineering and generative AI, with a focus on leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance the testing, evaluation, and reasoning capabilities of software systems.

I earned my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in May 2023. Before starting my PhD, I worked as a lecturer of Computer Science and Engineering at BRAC University, Dhaka.

I am always up for collaborations and exciting chats about new ideas, especially the half-baked ones 🤓 ! Feel free to email me if you’d like to connect!

News

• [March 2026] Attended the CRA-WP Grad Cohort 2026 in Seattle!

• [January 2026] Elected as the Leadership Chair of the Computer Science Graduate Student Group (CSGSG), UVA.

• [December 2025] First lead-authored paper from PhD, LoCaL: Countering Surface Bias in Code Evaluation Metrics directly accepted to FSE ‘26 - main research track!!

• [November 2025] Abstract, Analyzing and Mitigating Surface Bias in Code Evaluation Metrics accepted for oral presentation at the William and Mary Graduate Research Symposium 2026.

• [October 2025] Won both Best Poster-Faculty Choice and Best Poster- Audience Choice awards at the UVA Research Symposium 2025!

• [August 2024] Started Ph.D in CS at UVA.

• [August 2024] Paper, The Fault in our Stars: Quality Assessment of Code Generation Benchmarks accepted to 2024 IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation!

• [March 2024] Received UVA Provost’s Fellowship, comprising a $5,000 annual increase in PhD funding and a $7,500 one-time research grant!!

Work Experience

• Graduate Research Assistant (Aug 2024 – Present)
  LESS Lab, University of Virginia
  Advisor: Prof. Matthew B. Dwyer

• Lecturer (On Leave) (Jun 2023 – Present)
  Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BRAC University

• Remote Research Collaborator (Jun 2023 – Dec 2023)
  Security and Software Engineering (S2E) Lab, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Publications

• LoCaL: Countering Surface Bias in Code Evaluation Metrics
  Simantika Bhattacharjee Dristi, Matthew B. Dwyer
  ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2026. [Preprint]

• The Fault in our Stars: Quality Assessment of Code Generation Benchmarks
  Mohammed Latif Siddiq, Simantika Bhattacharjee Dristi, Joy Saha, Joanna C. S. Santos
  IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2024. [Paper]

Honors & Awards

• Received Travel Grant to attend CRA-WP Grad Cohort 2026.
• Won Best Poster – Faculty Choice and Best Poster – Audience Choice at the UVA Research Symposium 2025.
• Received the UVA Provost’s Fellowship (additional $5,000/year PhD support + $7,500 one-time research award).
• Received Dean’s List and University Merit Scholarship from the Department of CSE, BUET.

Services

• Leadership Chair, Computer Science Graduate Student Group (CSGSG), 2026
• General Secretary, Association of Bangladeshi Students at UVA (ABS@UVA), 2025–2026 Committee

Technical Skills

Languages: Python, Java, C/C++, Bash, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
Frameworks and Libraries: Transformers, HuggingFace, PEFT, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, NLTK, SpaCy, etc.