About Me

I am pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Anas Mahmoud. My research focuses on the utility of Large Language Models to address the needs of mobile application (app) users and developers. I apply natural language processing (NLP), qualitative analysis, and statistical methods to extract insights from user feedback and review several apps user interface (UI) designs for dark patterns. I also investigate app store policies on app testing & review and conduct user studies to examine their impact on app developers. Our research team has proposed and empirically evaluated AI-driven design strategies to enhance mobile app store utility. We have also proposed several actionable strategies for app developers to effectively meet app stores' requirements on app design and testing.

Publications

• Automatic Summarization of Mobile Application Reviews using Chain of Density Prompting

  S. Shrestha and A. Mahmoud, Automated Software Engineering Journal (ASEJ), 2025

• No Country for Indie Developers: A Study of Google Play’s Closed Testing Requirements for New Personal Developer Accounts

  G. Shrestha, S. Shrestha, and A. Mahmoud, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (ACM TOSEM), 2025

• Generating Rate Features for Mobile Applications

  S. Shrestha and A. Mahmoud, Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (ICSE MobileSoft), 2024

Research Interests

Software Engineering | Requirement Engineering | Natural Language Processing | App Store Requirement Analysis | User Interface Design Analysis | Human Computer Interactions | Qualitative Analysis

Education

• Louisiana State University

  2022 - present

  Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science; GPA: 3.91

  Dissertation title: “Leveraging Large Language Models to Enhance the Utility of Mobile App Store Rating Systems”

  Baton Rouge, LA, USA

• Tribhuwan University, Pulchowk Campus

  2015 - 2019

  Bachelor in Computer Engineering; GPA: 3.75

  Lalitpur, Nepal

Teaching

• Programming Lab Assistant (3 hr, 30 students)

  Supervised first-year undergraduate computer science students in their lab assignments for the “Introduction to the Java programming language” course.

• Graduate Teaching Assistant (3 hr, 100+ students)

  Offer assistance in grading midterm and final exams for two courses: “Software Systems Design” and “Programming Language.”

Work Experience

• Software Developer (full-time, onsite)

  Engineered web and mobile applications for the company including art e-commerce platform, survey form builder, and business profile verification tools.

• Intern, Software Developer, QA (full-time, 3 months, onsite)

  Developed and executed unit and integration tests for Java-based applications to ensure functionality, reliability, and code quality.

Technical Skills

• Programming Languages:

  Python, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript (JS), SQL, C/C++, Dart

• Frameworks & Tools:

  SpringBoot, Next.js, React (library), Flutter (SDK), Figma, NLTK, Git

• Cloud Technologies:

  Firebase (Auth, Functions, FireStore, NextJS integration), AWS

• Database:

  PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, HBase