Research Lab
I’ll be moving to Purdue University as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of “Applied AI” in the School of Applied and Creative Computing (ACC), starting August 17, 2026. This page may not be updated anymore. Please visit https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~moin/index.html. You can email me at [email protected].
Dr. Moin’s QAS (Quantum-Classical AI and Software Engineering) Lab
- Location
- Research Focus
- News
- Members
- Projects, Grants, and Awards
- Publications
- Talks and Presentations
- Press
- Open Positions
Location
Osborne Center for Science & Engineering (OCSE) A210
Research Focus
Founded in August 2023, the QAS Lab at the Department of Computer Science of UCCS focuses on research at the intersection of Quantum Computing (QC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Software Engineering (SE). The overarching themes of our research are AI4SE (e.g., Mining Software Repositories), and SE4AI (e.g., domain-specific Model-Driven Software Engineering for AI Engineering) for hybrid quantum-classical systems.
The four key active research areas/projects in the QAS Lab are as follows:
- Supporting quantum-classical software/AI engineering processes
- Enhancing the security of open-source software supply chains with AI
- AI energy efficiency and TinyML
- Modeling and learning anomalies in dendritic branching
We are also interested in the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), as well as a broad spectrum of applications/use-case domains ranging from cybersecurity and healthcare to energy efficiency.
The research program in the QAS Lab is at the heart of an organic, symbiotic ecosystem comprising the lab, classroom, and community. Our goal is to disseminate and transfer our research outcomes outside of the lab and address the real needs of people and society.
UCCS has been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research (CAE-R) by the National Security Agency (NSA). UCCS is the only university in Colorado with a CAE-R accreditation, and the only university with a high research activity (R2) in the Southern Colorado region according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Hence, the QAS lab research also leverages the cybersecurity and software security research capabilities at UCCS and has established fruitful collaborations both at UCCS and beyond that across the U.S. and globally.
News
April 14, 2026: Together with our partners at the Purdue Systems and Software Security Lab (PurS3), we organized the International Workshop on Firmware Security Vulnerabilities (FirmVuln26) at VulnCon26 in Scottsdale, AZ, USA, on April 13th, 2026.
March 22, 2026: Our paper titled “Towards Predicting Multi-Vulnerability Attack Chains in Software Supply Chains from Software Bill of Materials Graphs” has been accepted in the Ideas, Visions and Reflections (IVR) track of the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) 2026 in Montreal, Canada.
January 31, 2026: Our poster and extended abstract titled “Cascaded Vulnerability Attacks in Software Supply Chains” have been accepted in the 48th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
January 31, 2026: Our poster and extended abstract titled “ENERGY STAR” LLM-Enabled Software Engineering Tools have been accepted in the 5th International Conference on AI Engineering – Software Engineering (CAIN) 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
December 2, 2025: The QAS Lab’s undergraduate research assistant, Michael Conner, is selected as a Viceroy fellow!
December 2, 2025: The QAS Lab’s undergraduate research assistant, Laura Baird, is selected as a Viceroy fellow!
September 22, 2025: Dr. Moin (PI) won a $1.2M award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) together with Dr. Aravind Machiry from Purdue Systems and Software Security (PurS3) Lab at Purdue University in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, as Co-PI. The TianoShield project, funded by the NSF Safe-OSE program over 2025-2027, will contribute to the safety, security, and privacy of a key open-source ecosystem, called TianoCore, which is the foundation of the UEFI Firmware. We will deploy modern principles, practices, techniques, and tools, including those based on the state of the art in AI (e.g., Large Language Models), automated software testing (e.g., fuzzing), etc.
Members
Lab Director
Dr. Armin Moin, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor
Ph.D. Students
Mehak Haggemann (joined in January 2026)
Devin Haggitt (joined in January 2026)
Nazanin Siavash (joined in January 2025)
Master’s students
Noah Rose (Joined in June 2026)
Morgan McKenzie (Joined in February 2026)
Neelesh Reddybattula (Joined in January 2026)
Undergraduate Students
Laura Baird (joined in April 2025)
Michael Conner (joined in May 2025)
External Students and Researchers
Zahra Mardani Korani (joined in August 2023)
Samuel Poarch (joined in January 2026)
Jadesada Schneider (joined in March 2025)
Alumni
Projects, Grants, and Awards
Publications
Talks and Presentations
Media and Press
Open Positions
We are continuously looking for talented graduate (Master’s and Ph.D.) and undergraduate students who are interested in research (e.g., thesis, dissertation, independent study, or internship) while studying in the Computer Science (CS) Department programs at UCCS. Please send your resume/CV and your full transcripts (undergraduate and, if applicable, graduate) to Dr. Moin at [email protected] if you are interested in joining the QAS Lab.