Iffat Fatima

PhD Candidate
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
iffat[dot]fatima[at]hotmail[dot]com

Education

PhD

Software and Sustainability (S2) Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands | 2022 - Present

Topic: Software Architecture Evaluation for Sustainability
Supervised by: Prof. Dr. Patricia Lago (VU) and Prof. Dr. Vasilios Andrikopoulos (RuG)
Project: SustainableCloud Project (OCENW.M20.243) of the research programme Open Competition which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Novel Contributions

  • SustEval, a Software Architecture (SA) evaluation method for sustainability assessment, as an artifact, with guidelines and templates to conduct a sustainability-aware SA evaluation.
  • Blueprint, with general steps, inputs, and outputs for general SA evaluation.
  • Architecture Reconstruction Template, to document alternative design decisions for ASRs, their rationale, and possible issues.
  • KPI Framework, to create sound KPIs that help motivate the evaluation criteria for SA evaluation.
  • Utility Matrix, to identify QAs of relevance for each ASR (inspired by ATAM utility trees).
  • QA prioritization, to quantify a weighted priority based on cost and importance level of QA for a particular ASR.
  • Sustainability Impact Score (SIS), to quantify impact across sustainability dimensions
  • Reflections from each case study for specific improvements in SustEval, its applicability and limitations, as well as a final set of insights that serve as a guideline for other researchers and practitioners who aim to explore SA evaluation for sustainability.
  • Open source data sets and an artifact which were produced as outputs during different stages of this research.

Masters in Software Engineering

College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering (CEME), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan | 2021

Thesis: Detection of Android code smells and energy bugs to support Green Android Development. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Usman Qamar. In collaboration with Dr. Hina Anwar and Prof. Dr. Dietmar Pfhal from the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Bachelor in Software Engineering

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan | 2017

Project: Agripoint: A Mobile platform for agriculture community. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Hammad Cheema and Prof. Dr. Imran Mahmood. In collaboration with NUST Business School.

Experience

University of Tartu, Software Engineer (Research)

Remote, EE | Q4, 2020

As part of my post master thesis research, I developed IntelliJ IDE plugins for static code analysis and network request measurement for research. Collected energy consumption metrics from Android devices and generated automated reports with statistical analysis and visualizations.

Teamo SMC, Software Engineer

Islamabad, PK | 2019 – 2020

Developed features for "Ride with Surf", an advertisement and content-streaming platform. Integrated context-aware content-streaming based on USA's state-specific laws. Developed an advertisement integration framework running on Android tablets, TVs and LED advertisement panels.

PacSquare Technologies, Software Developer

Islamabad, PK | 2017 – 2019

Developed in-house applications across diverse domains including Fin-tech, Health, Social Networking, and Photo/Video Editing. Responsible for GDPR compliance for multiple products.

Teaching Activities

  • Guest Lecturer: Digitalization and Sustainability (x3), Fair Digital Design (x2)
  • Teaching Assistant: Service Oriented Design (x1), Fair Digital Design (x4)
  • Daily Supervisor: 11 Master Thesis Students and 2 Bachelor Thesis Students
  • Daily Supervisor: 10 Research Project Students

Community Activities

  • PC Member: European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) 2026
  • Publicity Co-Chair: International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) 2026
  • Sub-Reviewer: ICSA 2023, ICSA 2024, ECSA 2024, ICSA 2025, ICT4S 2025, ICSE 2025
  • Webmaster: Digital Sustainability Center (DiSC) (2023-Present)
  • Organizer: Reading Groups for Peer Review, (Part-Time:) S2 Research Seminars, PhD Meetings and DiSC Events
  • Speaker: ITARC 2025: Konferensen för IT-Arkitekter (en:The Conference for IT Architects)
  • Trainer: KPI Workshop (Attendees: Industry partners, Feed4Food Project Collaborators)

Publications

  1. K Toczé, I Fatima, P Lago, L van Wesenbeeck, "Supporting a Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Agriculture Federation using Dashboarding," arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.00595
  2. I. Fatima, ``Fairness-first design thinking in software architecture,'' in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering – Software Engineering Education and Training, ICSE-SEET, 2026, arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.18055
  3. I. Fatima and P. Lago, ``Ten Years of Software Engineering in Society,'' 11th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), IEEE. 2025, pp. 1-11. doi:10.1109/ICT4S68164.2025.00010
  4. M. Stivala, I. Fatima, and P. Lago, ``Investigating the Use of GitHub Copilot for Green Software,'' in Advances and New Trends in Environmental Informatics, ENVIROINFO 2024, Progress in IS. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2025, pp. 123-134. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-85284-8_13
  5. M. Bamiduro, I. Fatima, P. Lago, and S. Vos, ``Challenges in Incorporating Sustainability Practices in the Software Lifecycle,'' in Advances and New Trends in Environmental Informatics, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2025. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-85849-9_23
  6. I. Fatima, P. Lago, V. Andrikopoulos, and B. van der Waaij, ``Using Sustainability Impact Scores for Software Architecture Evaluation,'' in 2025 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C), IEEE, Apr. 2025, pp. 60--68. doi:10.1109/ICSA-C65153.2025.00017
  7. P. Banijamali, I. Fatima, P. Lago, and I. Heitlager, ``Unveiling Key Performance Indicators for the Energy Efficiency of Cloud Data Storage,'' in 2024 IEEE 21st International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C), 2024, pp. 222--229. doi:10.1109/ICSA-C63560.2024.00047.
  8. P. Lago, N. Condori Fernandez, I. Fatima, M. Funke, and I. Malavolta, ``The Sustainability Assessment Framework Toolkit: A Decade of Modeling Experience,'' in Software and Systems Modeling, Springer, 2024. doi:10.1007/s10270-024-01230-9.
  9. I. Fatima, M. Funke, and P. Lago, ``Providing Guidance to Software Practitioners: A Framework for Creating Key Performance Indicators,'' in IEEE Software, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 68--78, Jul.-Aug. 2025. doi:10.1109/MS.2024.3456446.
  10. I. Fatima and P. Lago, ``Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study,'' in Software Architecture. ECSA 2024, Springer, Cham, 2024, pp. 233--249. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_16. Won Distinguished Open Artifact Award
  11. I. Fatima and P. Lago, ``Towards a Sustainability-Aware Software Architecture Evaluation for Cloud-Based Software Services,'' in Software Architecture: ECSA 2023 Tracks, Workshops, and Doctoral Symposium, vol. 14590, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Cham, 2024, pp. 200--216. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-66326-0_13.
  12. I. Fatima and P. Lago, ``A Review of Software Architecture Evaluation Methods for Sustainability Assessment,'' in 2023 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C), L'Aquila, Italy, 2023, pp. 191--194. doi:10.1109/ICSA-C57050.2023.00050
  13. I. Fatima, ``Sustainability-Aware Software Architecting for the Future Cloud,'' in 2023 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C), L'Aquila, Italy, 2023, pp. i-vi. doi:10.1109/ICSA-C57050.2023.00041
  14. I Fatima, H Anwar, D Pfahl, U Qamar, "Tool Support for Green Android Development," Software Sustainability, 153-182, 2021 www.scitepress.org/Papers/2020/97703/97703.pdf
  15. I Fatima, H Anwar, D Pfahl, U Qamar, "Detection and Correction of Android-specific Code Smells and Energy Bugs: An Android Lint Extension," QuASoQ@ APSEC, 2020, 71-78, ceur-ws.org/Vol-2767/09-QuASoQ-2020.pdf
  16. I Fatima, H Anwar, D Pfahl, U Qamar, "Tool Support for Green Android Development: A Systematic Mapping Study," ICSOFT, 409-417, 2020
  17. I Fatima, MW Anwar, F Azam, B Maqbool, H Tufail, "Extending interaction flow modeling language (ifml) for android user interface components," International Conference on Information and Software Technologies, 76-89 doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30275-7_7

Awards

  1. Honorable Mention for Best Paper Award at the International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), 2025, for the paper: Ten Years of Software Engineering in Society
  2. Distinguished Open Artifact Award at the European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA), 2024, for the paper Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study