Pekka Abrahamsson

Pekka Abrahamsson is Professor of Software Engineering at Tampere University, based at Pori University Centre. He leads GPT-Lab, a research group operating across the Pori, Tampere and Seinäjoki campuses that studies how generative AI is reshaping software development and society more broadly. His research asks how software engineering changes when requirements, code and entire organisations are built by autonomous AI agents working alongside humans.

His background is in empirical software engineering and agile methods, a field in which he is among the most internationally recognised researchers. In recent years his work has expanded to the societal questions raised by AI, including democracy, media, security and information influence. A hallmark of his approach is building working experiments to support the research, from a digital parliament to an AI-led newsroom.

Abrahamsson is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. AI Finland named him AI Researcher of the Year 2025, and in 2026 he was awarded Software Engineering Professor of the Year. He is a sought-after speaker on the future of AI.

I lead research at GPT-Lab and build its funding base through competitive national and European funding. I supervise doctoral researchers, line-manage researchers and teach software engineering. I work with companies and the public sector and take part in the public debate on AI.

At the core of the research is the question of how the division of labour between humans and AI is changing the way software, organisations and society function.

• Generative AI and large language models in software development
• Autonomous AI agents and multi-agent systems
• AI-native software engineering and zero-human organisations
• Trustworthy AI deployment
• AI as an instrument of scientific research
• Societal impacts of AI: democracy, media, security and information influence
• Empirical software engineering
• Agile methods and software business

Recognition

• Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters since 2020, the first professor of software engineering to be elected
• Software Engineering Professor of the Year 2026
• AI Researcher of the Year 2025 (AI Finland)
• Finland’s most cited software engineering researcher and among the top 1% most cited in the field worldwide
• Top 100 Most Influential Scholars in Software Engineering (AMiner 2016)
• Nokia Foundation Recognition Award 2007 and ITEA Achievement Award 2007
• Best paper awards: IEEE Software 2020, Journal of Systems and Software 2018, EASE 2014

Scientific impact

• Pioneer of agile software development research. Developed Mobile-D, the first agile method for mobile application development
• Led the research group that developed ECCOLA, a method that brings AI ethics into software development practice
• 18 books and over 300 scientific publications, with more than 250 co-authors worldwide

Research leadership

• Founded GPT-Lab in 2023 and has led it since
• Coordinated large European research programmes: AGILE (€22M), FLEXI (€40M) and Cloud Software (€56M)
• Tenured professorships in Finland, Norway (NTNU) and Italy. Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano 2012–2015
• Founded and chaired the international Software Startup Research Network (SSRN)
• Built research and learning environments such as the Software Factory, Startuplab and makerspaces at three universities

Supervision and academic community

• Supervised 14 doctoral dissertations to completion and served as pre-examiner, opponent or evaluation committee member for more than 45 dissertations
• General Chair of XP2027. Previously chair of several international conferences and member of the IEEE Software Advisory Board

• Member, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
• Member of the expert panel, Publication Forum (JUFO), 2025–2028
• Member, AI Committee of the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation
• General Chair, XP2027
• Subject expert in the external review of software engineering research and doctoral education at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)
• Member of the advisory board, Finnish Software Engineering Professors community
• Jury member, Digital Act of the Year competition 2026

Previous

• Vice Dean and Dean, Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 2011–2015
• Head of the Information Systems Science discipline, University of Jyväskylä, 2020–2022
• Chair, Finnish Software Engineering Professors community
• Founder and Chair, Software Startup Research Network (SSRN), 2015–2018
• Member, IEEE Software Advisory Board, 2009–2012
• Member of the advisory board, SEMAT initiative (Software Engineering Method and Theory)
• Chair of the external evaluation panel for research environments, University of Skövde, 2023
• Member of the International Advisory Board, NSERC SurfNet research network, Canada, 2010–2014
• Faculty council member at the universities of Oulu, Helsinki and Jyväskylä
• Chair of several international conferences (including XP2009, Profes 2007, EuroSPI 2005 and 2007) and editorial board member of scientific journals

The starting point of the research is that AI is turning from a tool into an actor. When agents write code, make decisions and form organisations among themselves, the established assumptions of software engineering about division of labour, responsibility and quality must be re-examined. The aim is to understand this shift empirically and to build the methods needed to govern it.

AI-native software engineering. How should software development be organised when much of requirements engineering, design, implementation and testing is carried out by autonomous agents? The research develops and evaluates multi-agent systems for different phases of software development and identifies where human judgement cannot be replaced.

Trust and governed autonomy. How much decision-making power can agents be given, and how should their actions be overseen? The goal is practical methods for deploying trustworthy AI in organisations where the cost of error is high.

Zero-human organisations. The research examines companies and services run almost entirely by agents, and what this means for work, management and business.

AI as a scientist. When AI can produce research independently, scientific quality assurance must change. The goal is protocol-driven methods that make the work of autonomous research agents transparent and reproducible.

AI and societal resilience. The research examines the effects of AI on democracy, media and security: information influence, fraud, misuse targeting children and young people, and new forms of public decision-making. The method is working simulations and experiments in which future systems can be studied before they become everyday reality.

All of these themes share one question: what is the place of humans when systems begin to think, write and decide on our behalf?

Software development in the age of agents

• Multi-agent systems for requirements engineering, architecture, code generation and refactoring
• AI agents as members of software teams, for example an agent participating in product vision meetings and tools that generate requirements and prototypes from meetings
• The viability of small language models for code generation
• Adoption of generative AI in software companies

Projects (selection)

• ANSE, AI-native software engineering (Business Finland)
• MAISA, trustworthy AI deployment (Business Finland)
• AI-Champion (Business Finland)
• SYNTHETICA, synthetic data and generative AI (Research Council of Finland)
• EVIL-AI, misuse of AI targeting children and young people (Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation)

Societal experiments and demonstrators

• Digital Parliament: 200 AI agents process legislative proposals following the Finnish Parliament’s procedure
• Analysis of municipal decision-making: predicting from city council minutes whether proposals will pass, and an AI-based situation room for a city
• AI-assisted local newsroom
• Situational awareness tools for information influence and strategic communication
• Simulation and defence training against AI-enhanced financial fraud
• Autonomous research teams in which agents design and conduct research guided by protocols

• Computer and information sciences
• Business and economics
• Media and communications

The career has moved from industry-oriented applied research to professorships in three countries, and from agile methods research to generative AI.

• 2023– Professor of Software Engineering, Tampere University
• 2017–2022 Professor of Information Systems Science and Software Engineering, University of Jyväskylä. Head of the Information Systems Science discipline 2020–2022
• 2015–2017 Professor of Computer Science (Software Engineering), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim
• 2011–2015 Professor of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. Vice Dean 2011–2012 and Dean 2012–2015
• 2009–2011 Professor of Software Engineering (Software Quality), University of Helsinki
• 2002–2009 Research Scientist and Senior Scientist, Research Professor 2005–2009, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
• 2007–2009 Chief Scientist, SINTEF, Norway (part-time)
• Visiting Professor at the universities of Trento, Innsbruck and Cagliari
• 2002 PhD, University of Oulu

• Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J. & Warsta, J. (2002). Agile Software Development Methods: Review and Analysis. VTT Publications 478.
• Abrahamsson, P., Warsta, J., Siponen, M. & Ronkainen, J. (2003). New Directions on Agile Methods: A Comparative Analysis. ICSE 2003, 244–254.
• Abrahamsson, P., Babar, M. A. & Kruchten, P. (2010). Agility and Architecture: Can They Coexist? IEEE Software 27(2), 16–22.
• Paternoster, N., Giardino, C., Unterkalmsteiner, M., Gorschek, T. & Abrahamsson, P. (2014). Software Development in Startup Companies: A Systematic Mapping Study. Information and Software Technology 56(10), 1200–1218.
• Giardino, C., Paternoster, N., Unterkalmsteiner, M., Gorschek, T. & Abrahamsson, P. (2016). Software Development in Startup Companies: The Greenfield Startup Model. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 42(6), 585–604.
• Graziotin, D., Fagerholm, F., Wang, X. & Abrahamsson, P. (2018). What Happens When Software Developers Are (Un)happy. Journal of Systems and Software 140, 32–47. Best Paper of the Year
• Vakkuri, V., Kemell, K.-K., Kultanen, J. & Abrahamsson, P. (2020). The Current State of Industrial Practice in Artificial Intelligence Ethics. IEEE Software 37(4), 50–57. Best Paper of the Year
• Vakkuri, V., Kemell, K.-K., Jantunen, M., Halme, E. & Abrahamsson, P. (2021). ECCOLA: A Method for Implementing Ethically Aligned AI Systems. Journal of Systems and Software 182, 111067.
• Nguyen-Duc, A., et al. & Abrahamsson, P. (2025). Generative Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering: A Research Agenda. Software: Practice and Experience 55(11), 1806–1843.
• Sami, M. A., Evangelista, G., Kemell, K.-K., Zhang, Z., Zaina, L., Waseem, M. & Abrahamsson, P. (2026). From Meetings to Product Vision: An Agentic Approach with MARARE. IEEE Software 43(5), 48–55.