About Me

Since April 2022 I am working as a PhD student at the Chair of Software and Systems Engineering (Prof. Dr. Pretschner).

My area of research is integration testing of microservice systems. Integration testing is a crucial part of the development of software systems, as it specifically tests the interactions and interfaces between individual software components or services. Especially in the context of microservice architectures, the relevance of integration testing increases.

Prior to joining the chair, I completed my Master’s degree in Software Engineering, in an elite graduate program hosted by TU Munich in cooperation with the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the University of Augsburg.

 

 

Thesis Supervision

Open Topics

Please get in touch if you are interested in the topic below. Throughout the entire research period, we will meet weekly to discuss results, issues, and the next steps. You will receive feedback on your thesis before submission, giving you the opportunity to further improve your work. You will also get feedback on your presentation before presenting your work in front of our chair.

When applying, please include your resume, grade transcript, and a short motivational statement so that I can assess your prior knowledge and experience. Based on those documents, I will invite some students for a personal meeting to see if the topic fits the student.

Bachelor/ Master/ Guided Research: Coverage Measures for Integration Testing of Microservice Systems You can find a topic description here. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in microservice systems and related techs like Docker, Maven, REST, TestContainers, etc. Very good skills in Java are required This thesis topic is relatively implementation-heavy, so good programming skills are necessary Experience with OpenTelemetry might be an advantage Fundamental understanding of software testing, specifically the differences between the indiviual test levels Start of this topic: Winter Semester 2025/26

Ongoing/ Assigned Topics

Evaluating LLMs for Software Testing	Bachelor
Coverage Criteria for Integration Testing of Microservice Systems	Bachelor
Mutation Testing for Microservice Systems	Master

Finished Topics

Analyzing Faults in Microservice Systems	Bachelor
Coverage Criteria for Integration Testing of Microservice Systems	Bachelor
Evaluating ChatGPT for Software Testing (with QS)	Master
Error Handling in Microservice Architectures*	Bachelor
A Fault Injection Method for Evaluating Test Generation Frameworks for Microservices	Master
Test Smells and Coverage Criteria for Microservice Component and Integration Tests and Deficits in Open-Source Microservice System Testing	Seminar
How Well Are Open-Source Systems Tested?	Seminar
Evaluation of a Metric for Measuring Program Code Change*	Master
Tool-Supported Reconstruction of Software Architectures*	Master
The Impact of TDD on Testing Effort	Seminar

* in cooperation with itestra GmbH

 

 

Teaching

Semester	Course
Summer Semester 2025	Requirements Engineering Requirements Engineering (Elite Graduate program)
Winter Semester 24/25	Practical Course Development and Testing of Microservices
Summer Semester 2024	Requirements Engineering Requirements Engineering (Elite Graduate program) Practical Course Testing Microservice Systems
Summer Semester 2023	Seminar Software Quality Requirements Engineering Requirements Engineering (Elite Graduate program)
Winter Semester 22/23	Seminar Software Quality
Summer Semester 2022	Seminar Software Quality Requirements Engineering Requirements Engineering (Elite Graduate program)

 

Publications

Gregor, Lena; Skalski, Marcel; Pretschner, Alexander. Benchmarking Component and Integration Testing in Microservices: Test Suites and Fault Analysis on TrainTicket. 2025 IEEE International Congress on Intelligent and Service-Oriented Systems Engineering (CISOSE 2025), IEEE, 2025, Accepted for Publication.

Gregor, Lena; Hentschel, Anja; Kastner, Leon; Pretschner, Alexander. A Taxonomy of Integration-Relevant Faults for Microservice Testing. 18th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2025), IEEE, 2025.

Pretschner, Alexander; Gregor, Lena. Understanding Integration Testing. Engineering Safe and Trustworthy Cyber Physical Systems -- Essays Dedicated to Werner Damm on the Occasion of His 71st Birthday, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2024.

Gregor, Lena; Schnappinger, Markus; Pretschner, Alexander. Revisiting Inter-Class Maintainability Indicators. 30th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER), IEEE, 2023, 805–814.

 

 

Presentations

Title	Event	Date
On Service-to-Service Integration Testing in Microservice Systems	Doctoral Symposium at ICST	2.4.-4.4.2025
The Fault in Our Services: Investigating Integration-Relevant Faults in Microservices	Microservices 2023	10.10-12.10.2023