Software Engineer PhD Student · Idaho State University

Costain Nachuma

I ship production developer tooling — IDE plugins, LLM-integrated pipelines, graph-grounded retrieval systems — and study how AI reshapes software engineering at scale. 9+ years of prior industry experience; currently researching AI-assisted code comprehension and supply chain security.

Pocatello, ID costainnachuma [at] isu.edu SECReT Lab Advisor: Dr. Minhaz Zibran

Download Resume GitHub LinkedIn Google Scholar

Publications

4.0

GPA

Years Industry

500+

Users Supported

Awards Won

About

🛠️

Production AI Tooling

Shipped a 5-layer Eclipse IDE plugin spanning three LLM backends, released publicly with a Zenodo artifact

📊

Large-Scale Systems

Python/DuckDB and Neo4j pipelines processing 14M+ records — GitHub, Maven, and Chromium ecosystems

🔒

Supply Chain Security

Quantifying dependency risks and evaluating SBOM tools across open-source ecosystems

Software engineer and PhD student in Computer Science at Idaho State University (GPA: 4.0) who ships production tooling end-to-end: designed and released Comprendia, a 5-layer Eclipse IDE plugin integrating three LLM backends, and built Python/graph-database pipelines processing 14M+ records. Before academia, I spent 9+ years leading engineering and infrastructure for a 500+ user government network at the National Assembly of Zambia. My research on AI-assisted software engineering is published at top venues including ICSME 2026, MSR 2026, MSR 2025, MSR 2024, and ACM SAC 2024. I bring both rigorous research depth and real production experience.

🏛️ SECReT Lab — Software Engineering & Cybersecurity Research Team 🤝 Advisor: Dr. Minhaz Zibran

Selected Projects

Comprendia — AI-Augmented Code Comprehension

Eclipse IDE plugin · Java · 5-layer architecture

Zenodo Artifact Demo Video

Designed and shipped a 5-layer IDE plugin combining a Cytoscape.js dependency-graph UI, a JDT AST analysis engine, OSV.dev/JGit vulnerability integration, and an AiGateway spanning three production LLM backends (Claude, OpenAI, Ollama). Introduces Graph-Aware Callee Pruning (GACP), an algorithm that grounds LLM prompts in a live dependency graph instead of embedding similarity — producing deterministic, auditable output reproducible across LLM families via an O(V+E) reachability filter. Benchmarked across 6 code fixtures × 4 prompt modes × 3 LLM families. Tool demo accepted at ICSME 2026.

JavaEclipse JDTCytoscape.js Neo4jLLM IntegrationOSV.dev

Chromium Bug ETL Pipeline

Python · 5-script scraping & parsing pipeline

Built a 5-script scraping/HTML-parsing pipeline against the live Chromium issue tracker, working around its 1,000-record API cap to assemble a complete research dataset. Powered a study of 5,575 security and 4,605 performance bug reports, published in "On the Assessment of Security and Performance Bugs in Chromium Open-Source Project."

PythonBeautifulSoupREST APIsData Engineering

Professional Experience

Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant

Idaho State University — Pocatello, ID

Aug 2023 – Present

Designed and shipped Comprendia, an Eclipse IDE plugin with a 5-layer architecture (Cytoscape.js UI, JDT AST analysis engine, OSV.dev/JGit integration, and an AiGateway spanning three production LLM backends — Claude, OpenAI, Ollama); benchmarked across 6 code fixtures × 4 prompt modes × 3 LLM families and released publicly with a Zenodo artifact and demo video.
Built Graph-Aware Callee Pruning (GACP), an algorithm that grounds LLM prompts in a live dependency graph instead of embedding similarity, producing deterministic, auditable output reproducible across LLM families (O(V+E) reachability filter).
Built a Python/DuckDB pipeline processing 33,596 GitHub pull requests across 2,807 repositories, and a separate Neo4j-backed pipeline querying 14.4M+ package releases for dependency-vulnerability analysis (21-hour batch job on a 64GB/24-core system); mentored 20+ students.
Conducted a Systematic Mapping Study (Kitchenham's guidelines) synthesizing literature on software visualization tools.

Instructor of Record — CS 3309: Advanced Object-Oriented Programming

Idaho State University — Pocatello, ID

Fall 2025

Sole instructor for a 45-student undergraduate course; independently designed the curriculum, delivered all lectures, and graded consistently — rated 3.50/4.0 for overall teaching effectiveness (90% agree/strongly agree) in end-of-term evaluations.

Senior Support Specialist, Software Engineer

National Assembly of Zambia — Lusaka, Zambia

Aug 2020 – Aug 2023

Led modernization of parliamentary web platforms and designed a testing protocol for high-stakes congressional sessions (VP, ministers, MPs), raising pre-meeting error discovery to ~95%.

Systems Librarian Intern

Prosentient Systems Pty — Sydney, Australia

May 2019 – Jul 2019

Developed a Java-based real-time communication tool improving cross-institutional research collaboration.
Administered Linux servers and open-source platforms (DSpace, Openfire) using Git and SSH.

Software Developer, Technical Support Specialist

National Assembly of Zambia — Lusaka, Zambia

Jun 2012 – Aug 2018

Provided technical support for 500+ staff and built an automated provisioning script for a country-wide network, cutting configuration time 90% (100% consistent) and issue resolution time 30%.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science — Software Engineering & Cybersecurity

Idaho State University — Pocatello, ID · GPA: 4.0

Aug 2023 – May 2027

Dissertation: Interactive IDE-integrated software visualization tools for code comprehension
Research areas: Empirical Software Engineering, AI-assisted development, Software Supply Chain Security

M.Sc. in Computer Science

University of New Orleans (now LSU New Orleans) — New Orleans, LA

2018 – 2020

B.Sc. in Computer Science

University of Zambia — Lusaka, Zambia

2007 – 2011

Selected Publications

6 peer-reviewed publications at top software-engineering venues. Also presented at ITNG 2025 (Springer) and i-ETC 2024/2026; full list with citation counts on Google Scholar →

ICSME 2026 · IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution

Comprendia: AI-Augmented Code Comprehension

Nachuma, C. & Zibran, M. F.

Tool Demonstration and Data Showcase Track

arXiv:2608.10290

MSR 2026 · 23rd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories

When AI Teammates Meet Code Review: Collaboration Signals Shaping the Integration of Agent-Authored Pull Requests

Nachuma, C. & Zibran, M. F.

doi.org/10.1145/3793302.3793561

MSR 2025 · 22nd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories

Decoding Dependency Risks: A Quantitative Study of Vulnerabilities in the Maven Ecosystem

Nachuma, C., Hossan, M. M., Turzo, A. K. & Zibran, M. F.

doi.org/10.1109/MSR66628.2025.00048

MSR 2024 · 21st ACM International Conference on Mining Software Repositories

ChatGPT in Action: Analyzing Its Use in Software Development

Champa, A. I., Rabbi, M. F., Nachuma, C. & Zibran, M. F.

doi.org/10.1145/3643991.3645077

ACM SAC 2024 · 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing

SBOM Generation Tools Under Microscope: A Focus on the npm Ecosystem

Rabbi, M. F., Champa, A. I., Nachuma, C. & Zibran, M. F.

doi.org/10.1145/3605098.3635927

ACM CompEd 2025 · ACM Global Computing Education Conference

Future Ready, Globally Relevant: Aligning Africa's Tertiary CS Education with Global Standards

Jonathan, M., Oudshoorn, M., Binamungu, L. P., Bainomugisha, E., Nachuma, C., et al.

doi.org/10.1145/3736251.3749527

Technical Skills

Languages

PythonJava C#JavaScriptSQL

Systems & DevOps

GitDocker GitHub Actions (CI/CD)Linux JGitEclipse JDT

Data & Databases

PostgreSQLMySQL OracleNeo4j (Cypher/graph queries) DuckDBParquet

LLM & AI Integration

Anthropic ClaudeOpenAI OllamaPrompt/Context Engineering Graph-Grounded Retrieval

Automation & Data Pipelines

REST API IntegrationBeautifulSoup ETL ScriptingPandasNumPy

Research & Statistical Methods

Logistic Regression (clustered SEs)Wilson Score CIs Systematic MappingQualitative Coding

Cybersecurity

Supply Chain RiskThreat Intelligence SBOM EvaluationCVE/OSV Analysis

Leadership & Volunteering

Team Lead — TechEquity AI Summit, Plug and Play Tech Center, Sunnyvale, CA · Nov 2025

Led 50+ volunteers supporting 2,000+ attendees; coordinated exhibitor and executive stakeholder engagement.

CS Mentor — Idaho State University · 2023 – Present

Provide mentorship in programming fundamentals, career development, and technical interview preparation.

President — University of Zambia Computer Society (UNZACS) · 2010

Organized coding bootcamps and workshops, increasing student participation in computing initiatives.

Certifications

🎓 IBM / Coursera: Python for Data Science, AI & Development (2026)