Xipeng Shen joins CS from University of Rochester where he did research in compiler technology.Xipeng Shen attended the University of Rochester from 2001 to 2006 receiving a Master of Science degree and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 2003 and 2006 respectively. His research lies in the area of Programming Systems and Compiler Technology. He focuses on modeling and predicting large-scale dynamic behavior patterns to improve performance, control memory size, and support coarse-grain parallelization through offline program transformation and online program adaptation. His work has contributed effective techniques for understanding and exploiting program locality, behavior phases, and high-level parallelism, which have been published on major conferences (PLDI, ASPLOS, ICS, ICPP, ISMM etc.) and academic journals (ACM TOPLAS, IEEE TOC, Pattern Recognition.) His lightweight locality model has been implemented in TPO, the core optimization component of IBM C/C++ and Fortran compilers.Before joining the University of Rochester, he received his Master of Science in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. He attended the North China University of Technology from 1994 to 1998 receiving a Bachelor of Engineering in Industry Automation in 1998.
Peter Kemper joins CS from Universitat Dortmund, Germany, where he did research in the formal modeling of systems.Peter Kemper holds a diploma degree in computer science (Dipl.-Inform., 1992) and a doctor al degree (Dr.rer.nat, 1996), both from Universitaet Dortmund, Germany.His main interests are in the quantitative evaluation of systems and formal aspects of software engineering. In addition to developing modelling techniques and tools for performance and dependability assessment of computer and communication systems, he also work s on model-based evaluation of manufacturing systems and logistic networks. He has contributed t o several tools for functional and quantitative analysis of discrete event syste ms, including the QPN tool, the APNN toolbox, the ProC/B toolset, and Traviando, a recently developed trace analyzer to debug simulation models.
David Coppit has received a 3-year $328,784 grant from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research to support his research on software plans. In traditional software development, programmers use language abstractions to structure the system into modules to help maintain intellectual control. Unfortunately, within modules software remains complex due to fine-grained tangling of concerns. Software plans seek to address this problem by providing the programmer with a new mechanism for separating concerns that is orthogonal to traditional language abstractions. Using a plan-aware editor, a programmer can implement a module in terms of multiple semi-independent plans, each of which encapsulates a concern or feature of interest. Once the concerns of the system have been implemented in separate plans, they can then be integrated to produce the traditional tangled version expected by compilers and other development tools. By using software plans, programmers can more easily reason about the implementation and integration of separately developed features, even when they occur in the same module.
Allen Tucker (Bowdoin College) and Robert Noonan published the second edition of their textbook entitled Programming Languages: Principles and Paradigms in September with McGraw-Hill. The first edition appeared in November 2001. The new edition is a major rewrite, having 18 chapters to the first edition's 11 chapters. Major new features include:
- A greatly expanded treatment of the four major programming language paradigms: imperative, object-oriented, functional, and logic.
- Language coverage is expanded to include Perl, Python, C, C++, Java, Scheme, Haskell, Smalltalk, Ada, and Prolog.
- Later chapters include coverage of event-driven programming, concurrency, and correctness.
Students NewsPhD Dissertation DefensesMarcia Zangrilli Bryan defended her Ph.D. dissertation on November 29, 2006.Topic: Passive Available Bandwidth: Applying Self-Induced Congestion Analysis to Application-GeneratedTrafficQi Zhang defended her Ph.D. dissertation on December 1, 2006.Topic: The Effect of Workload Dependence in Systems: Experimental Evaluation, Analytic Models, andPolicy DevelopmentCS Graduate Student AssociationCSGSA is an organization for Computer Science grad students to voice ideas and concerns to faculty and administration. It also disseminates information within the department and provides social opportunities to members.
We've had 2 Unix and Beer sessions this semester already. Don't miss out on another one! Check out notes for previous "Unix and Beers" (including the most recent vim tutorial).Grad School Bytes (pdf) August 2006 is available for download.
The LaTeX Article supplement is also available.
CS News
John McManus named as acting NASA Chief Information Officer
NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale named John McManus (MS '86, PHD '91 Computer Science) acting Chief Information Officer for NASA.Previously, McManus served as the deputy chief information officer, chief technology officer and chief architect for the Office of the Chief Information Officer. McManus succeeds Patricia L. Dunnington. In his new position, McManus will ensure that the agency's information resource management strategy is in alignment with NASA's vision, mission and strategic goals. In addition, he will focus on the development of integrated information resource management strategies, including standards, policies, the NASA Enterprise Architecture, IT security, management and operations. He received his Ph.D. (1991) and M.S. (1986) in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary, and a B.A. fromRandolph-Macon College. McManus joined NASA from Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill,NJ, where he served as vice president of the Software Technology Center. He has also served as vice president for research at Cigital, Inc., following a career in flight simulation research, development and management at NASA's Langley Research Center.CS Jobs Among the Highest Paid
Computer Science (CS) jobs are among the highest paid, highest satisfaction jobs of the projected highest growth jobs through 2014. Growth rates for CS jobs have solidly exceeded the outsourcing rate and employment has exceeded the dot-com boom, yet students listing CS as a probable major have dropped by 70% because outsourcing is perceived as a threat. A severe shortage of CS graduates looms, and promises excellent opportunities for savvy students.Noteworthy Facts
- Software engineers top list of best jobs according to a Money magazine and Salary.com survey based on "strong growth prospects, average pay of $80,500 and potentialtivity".
- 5 computing jobs are in the top 10 salary jobs from the Buau of Labor Statistics' list of the 30 fastest growing jobs through 2014.
- Computer systems software engineer: $81,140
- Computer applications software engineer: $76,310
- Computer systems analyst: $67,520
- Database administrator: $61,950
- Network systems anakyst: $61,250
- In May 2004, "US IT employment was 17% higher than in 1999 -- 5% higher than the bubble in 2000 and showing an8% growth ..."
- Such growth rates swamp predictions of the outsourcing job loss in the U.S., which most studies estimate to be 2% to 3% per year for the next decade.Ħħ
- According to the National Science Foundation, the need for science and engineering graduates will grow 26%, or 1.25 million, between now and 2012. The number of jobs requiring technical training is growing at five times the rate of other occupations.
- And U.S. schools are nowhere near meeting the demand, according to multiple studies.
- The percentage of college freshmen listing computer science as their probable major fell 70% between 2000 and 2004.
Considering decreasing supply and increasing demand, there is much promise for today's CS majors!
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