Пизар Себастьян

Sebastián Pizard is Adjunct Professor (Profesor Adjunto, Grade 3) at the Universidad de la República's Faculty of Engineering (Facultad de Ingeniería), Uruguay, where he is a member of the Computer Science Institute (Instituto de Computación). He is also a researcher in Uruguay's National System of Researchers (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, SNI) and in the Informatics Area of PEDECIBA, Uruguay's National Programme for the Development of Basic Sciences. He earned his PhD in Informatics from PEDECIBA in 2024 with a dissertation investigating evidence-based software engineering training and adoption, supervised by Barbara Kitchenham and Diego Vallespir, after completing a Master's in Informatics (2016) and a degree in Computer Engineering at the same university. His current research interests center on Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE), with a particular focus on the adoption of scientific evidence by industry practitioners and government agencies, software engineering training and education, systematic and rapid literature reviews, industry–academia collaboration, qualitative research methods, and, more recently, the use of large language models to support evidence synthesis.

Sebastián has (co)authored several peer-reviewed publications in journals including Empirical Software Engineering, Information and Software Technology, Science of Computer Programming, and the European Journal of Engineering Education, as well as in international venues such as ICSE-SEET and CIbSE. His work has investigated, among other topics, the use of rapid reviews to support software engineering practice, attitudes toward EBSE in government agencies, the longitudinal effects of EBSE training, and the use of real-world scenarios to bridge training and professional practice. He has taught software engineering courses since 2008, and since 2017 he has designed and taught a graduate and undergraduate EBSE course, publicly releasing the course materials in English and Spanish to enable adaptation in other educational settings. He has also supervised numerous undergraduate theses and integrative projects, and serves regularly as a thesis committee member.

Beyond research and teaching, Sebastián has carried out extensive knowledge-transfer and outreach work, including field studies and workshops with Uruguayan industry and government partners such as AGESIC, the national agency responsible for digital policy. Before fully transitioning to academia, he spent a decade in the software industry in various roles, including as Quality Manager at a local software company, where he led testing teams and defined software development, maintenance, and implementation methodologies.

Sebastián also contributes actively to the research community as a reviewer and program committee member for journals and conferences including Information and Software Technology (IST), ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), ESEM, EASE, SANER, and CIbSE. He has co-organized the Uruguayan Software Engineering Days (Jornadas de Ingeniería de Software del Uruguay) within the IS.uy program, which aims to strengthen ties between industry and academia, and he serves on several institutional committees at his faculty, where he is also the reference person for software engineering in the Computer Technologist and Computer Science programs.