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Biography
Dr. Xiwei (Sherry) Xu is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, and Adjunct Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney. Her research sits at the intersection of software architecture, AI engineering, agentic systems, context engineering, and trustworthy digital systems.
She co-hosts ICSA2027 in Sydney as general co-chair. ICSA is the flagship IEEE conference on software architecture. Her contributions to software architecture and distributed trust have been recognized through the ICSA Most Influential Paper Award (2026) for “The Blockchain as a Software Connector” and the BPM Test of Time Award (2025) for her earlier work on blockchain-enabled business process management systems.
Her recent work focuses on foundation model-based systems, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), context engineering. She is particularly interested in developing architectural foundations and engineering practices that enable trustworthy, scalable, and human-centered AI systems.
Beyond research, Sherry actively contributes to the responsible adoption of AI in education through collaborations with education departments, schools, and industry partners. She is a speaker on responsible use of AI for education, and regularly engages with school students—particularly young women—to encourage greater participation in STEM, AI, and software engineering.
Other Interests
2026
• Klymenko, M., Hoang, T., Wilkinson, S. A., Goldozian, B., Ma, S., Xu, X., et al. Context-aware unit testing for quantum subroutines. Quantum Science and Technology, 2026.
• Xu, Y., Zhang, W., Zhang, Y., Lin, X., Xu, X. Unlocking Multi-Modal Potentials for Link Prediction on Dynamic Text-Attributed Graphs. AAAI 2026.
• Chen, J., Wang, Z., Sun, J., Xing, Z., Lu, Q., Huang, Q., Xu, X., Zhu, L. From Exploration to Revelation: App-Level Context-Aware Deceptive Pattern Detection for Mobile Applications. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2026.
• Ren, J., Zhou, W., Li, B., et al. Causal Prompting for Implicit Sentiment Analysis with Large Language Models. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 2026.
2025
• Ren, J., Tang, T., Jia, H., et al. Foundation Models for Anomaly Detection: Vision and Challenges. AI Magazine, 2025.
• Klymenko, M., Hoang, T., Xu, X., Xing, Z., Usman, M., Lu, Q., Zhu, L. Architectural Patterns for Designing Quantum Artificial Intelligence Systems. Journal of Systems and Software, 2025.
• Xu, Y., Zhang, W., Zhang, Y., Xu, X., Lin, X. Fast and Accurate Temporal Hypergraph Representation for Hyperedge Prediction. KDD 2025.
• Zhang, D., Finckenberg-Broman, P., Hoang, T., Pan, S., Xing, Z., Staples, M., Xu, X., et al. Right to be Forgotten in the Era of Large Language Models: Implications, Challenges, and Solutions. AI and Ethics, 2025.
• Li, X., Liu, Q., Bai, Q., Xu, X. The Role of Knowledge Graphs on Responsible Artificial Intelligence Realization: Research Opportunities and Challenges. Computer, 2025.
• Tan, X., Wang, X., Liu, Q., Xu, X., Yuan, X., Zhu, L., Zhang, W. Paths-over-Graph: Knowledge Graph Empowered Large Language Model Reasoning. WWW 2025.
• Xu, X., Pautasso, C., Lo, S. K., Zhu, L., Lu, Q., Weber, I. An Extended Pattern Collection for Blockchain-Based Applications. Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming V, 2025.
• Liu, Y., Lo, S. K., Lu, Q., Zhu, L., Zhao, D., Xu, X., Harrer, S., Whittle, J. Agent Design Pattern Catalogue: A Collection of Architectural Patterns for Foundation Model Based Agents. Journal of Systems and Software, 2025.
2024
• Zhang, Z., Xing, Z., Ren, X., Lu, Q., Xu, X. Refactoring to Pythonic Idioms: A Hybrid Knowledge-Driven Approach Leveraging Large Language Models. Proceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering (FSE), 2024.
• Huang, Q., Luo, Z., Xing, Z., Zeng, J., Chen, J., Xu, X., Chen, Y. Revealing the Unseen: AI Chain on LLMs for Predicting Implicit Dataflows to Generate Dataflow Graphs in Dynamically Typed Code. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2024.
• Malik, S., Bandara, H. M. N. D., van Beest, N. R. T. P., Xu, X. Smart Contracts’ Upgradability for Flexible Business Processes. BPM 2024.
• Lu, Q., Zhu, L., Xu, X., Whittle, J., Zowghi, D., Jacquet, A. Responsible AI Pattern Catalogue: A Collection of Best Practices for AI Governance and Engineering. ACM Computing Surveys, 2024.
• Sun, J., Chen, J., Xing, Z., Lu, Q., Xu, X., Zhu, L. Where is it? Tracing the Vulnerability-Relevant Files from Vulnerability Reports. ICSE 2024.
• Zhang, Z., Xing, Z., Zhao, D., Xu, X., Zhu, L., Lu, Q. Hard to Read and Understand Pythonic Idioms? DeIdiom and Explain Them in Non-Idiomatic Equivalent Code. ICSE 2024.
• Su, Y., Liao, D., Xing, Z., Huang, Q., Xie, M., Lu, Q., Xu, X. Enhancing Exploratory Testing by Large Language Model and Knowledge Graph. ICSE 2024.
Achievements and Awards
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2027-2027
Most Influence Paper Award
ICSA2027 -
2026-2026
Test-of-Time award
BPM2025 -
2025-2025
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award in ICSE2025
ICSE -
2022-2022
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award in CAIN2022 (Co-author)
CAIN -
2020-2020
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award in ICSE2020 (Co-author)
ICSE -
2020-2020
Data61 Customer First Award
Data61 -
2019-2019
Best Student Paper in ICBC2019 (Supervisor, Co-author)
IEEE ICBC -
2018-2018
CSIRO DNFC Science Excellence (as team member)
Data61 -
2018-2018
Data61 Science Excellence
Data61 -
2017-2017
Data61 Science Excellence (as team member)
Data61 -
2024-2024
BPM2024 Best Blockchain Forum Paper
BPM2025 -
2017-2017
Data61 Woman in Science Career
Data61
Professional Areas
Other highlights
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2013-2020
Recognized as a top scholar by the JSS' Bibliometric Assessment of Software Engineering Scholars and Institutions, ranking 4th globally as one of the most impactful SE researchers
Grants
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2021-2023
CSIRO CERC Postdoctoral Fellowship
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2019-2022
CSIRO Julius Career Award
Community and Corporate Citizenship
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2021-2024
Equity Contact Officer @ NSW
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2021-2024
Fire Warden @ Level 3 of Eveleigh
ORCID 0000-0002-2273-1862
We have publications by Dr Sherry Xu