Overview

I'm a University Distinguished Professor and Lucas-Rathbone Professor of Engineering (brief bio sketch,full CV) in the Computer Science Department at Kansas State University, and I lead the laboratory for Specification, Analysis, and Transformation of Software (SAnToS). SAnToS aims to develop and mature technologies and tools for effective construction of high-confidence software systems.

SAnToS Laboratory emphasizes a research methodology in which research advances are achieved by building robust tools that can be applied to and evaluated against real systems in the context of realistic development practices, and then using insights gained in these evaluations to guide future research directions and priorities. In these efforts, we rely on extensive interaction with our industrial partners to gain insight into particular foundational advances and tool capabilities that will be necessary to affect practice. SAnToS tools have been used in a number of academic research groups world-wide and in projects by engineers at Boeing (Phantom Works, St. Louis), Lockheed Martin, Rockwell-Collins, and Adventium Labs.

SAnToS Researchers were members of the NASA Java Pathfinder Team that in 2003 received NASA's Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) Award -- one of fifteen awards given to NASA projects in 2003 that best demonstrated progress toward NASA's mission objectives. In May 2005, SAnToS' Cadena environment was used by Boeing engineers to develop the avionics software flown on the Scan Eagle Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) platform for the DARPA PCES capstone demo at White Sands Missile Range.

In 2010, SAnToS Researchers received two major professional society awards -- ACM SIGSOFT's prestigious Impact Paper Award, and International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE) Most Influential Paper Award for their original paper on the Bandera software model checking framework. Both of these awards are retrospective awards given by the world's primary professional organization of software engineers and the world's largest software engineering conference to the paper that has had the greatest impact on the theory and practice of software engineering in the ten years since its publication.

SAnToS Laboratory has been funded through agencies and companies such as the National Science Foundation, Army Research Office, DARPA, NASA, Department of Homeland Security, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins, IBM, and Intel (list of funded projects).

Current Research Emphases My general interests include:

software model checking, software architectures, foundations of model-driven for component middleware frameworks, static and dynamic analysis of programs, program slicing, partial evaluation and program specialization, and program logics.

I'm working on several other projects involving developing tools and techniques for development and verification of high-assurance software systems.

  • ISOSCELES (with Adventium Labs) - an open-source platform for individual medical devices with interoperability interfaces that provides built in safety, security services and uses hypervisor technology to provide partitioning properties as a foundation for safety and security assurance.
  • Security & Safety Co-Analysis Tool Environment (SSCATE) (with Adventium Labs) Model-based hazard analysis and risk management for integrated medical systems.
  • Medical Device Coordination Framework -- an open-source platform for integrating medical devices and coordinating their actions to support "system of systems" engineering in care-giving contexts.
Here are some previous noteworthy projects that are no longer active.
  • Bogor --- a customizable/extensible model-checker for object-oriented software emphasizing the notion of domain-specific model-checking
  • Cadena --- a robust tool environment for modeling, analysis, and model-driven development of large-scale distributed systems built using component middleware frameworks such as the CORBA Component Model (CCM) or Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)
  • Bandera --- a tool suite for detecting hard-to-find defects in concurrent Java software using model-checking techniques
  • Indus --- a featureful program slicer and static analysis framework for Java

All of the tools above are implemented in IBM's Eclipse platform, and they've been used by a number of different academic and industrial research groups.

Current Service Projects I'm involved (currently or recently) in organizing the following meetings/events:

My current and recent service activities are listed below (click here for past program committee and other service efforts within the international research community).

Invited Talks Upcoming and recent invited talks:

  • Opening Address: "Addressing safety and security in standards for interoperable medical systems: The AAMI/UL 2800 Family of Standards", Software Certification Consortium, May 11, 2017.
  • Invited Talk: "Safety and Security Standards for Medical Application Platforms" US/Germany Standards Meeting, Washington, DC, April 11 – 13, 2016
  • Keynote Address, “Architecture Principles and Certification Approaches for Medical Application Platforms”. Venue: Layered Assurance Workshop (University City, CA). Affiliated workshop of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). December 7, 2015.
  • Keynote Address, “Architectural and Assurance Principles for Safety-Critical Composition-on- Demand Systems”. Venue: NSA Cyberlinx4 Conference (Assurance) April 13, 2015
  • Talk Title: "Interoperable Medical Device Interface Safety -- Future Directions".
    Venue: American College of Clinical Engineers webinar. September 11, 2014.
  • Talk Title: Medical Application Platforms – Rationale, Architectural Principles, and Certification Challenges.
    Venue High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) Coordinating Group of the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD). Nov. 5, 2014.

Click here for previous invited talks and tutorials.

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