Muhammad Ali Babar

Muhammad combines evidence-led software security research with collaborative engineering projects and education. The AI supply chain study gives developers and researchers a structured account of reported security problems and responses, including areas where concrete solutions are missing. Leadership of SOCRATES and sustained mentoring also support the people and practices needed to improve software quality.

Muhammad Ali Babar is Professor of Software Engineering at Adelaide University, researching secure software systems, architecture and engineering practices. Holding a PhD from the University of New South Wales, Muhammad leads an applied research group focusing on trustworthy AI supply chains and secure infrastructure, having earlier served as Director of Research for the School of Computer Science from 2019 to 2021.

With The Anh Nguyen and Triet Le, Muhammad co-authored an ICSE 2026 study of security discussions on GitHub and Hugging Face. The team combined keyword searches with an automated text classifier to identify 312,868 security-related discussions, then manually analysed 753 posts. The resulting classification covers 32 security issues and 24 solutions, highlighting gaps in developer responses to model and data problems.

Broader work includes leading the SOCRATES software security project, bringing together researchers with industry and government partners to develop and evaluate security methods and tools. Muhammad has also mentored 18 PhD students and more than 28 postdoctoral researchers, alongside helping develop and assess software engineering degree programmes.