Jeff Tian's Research, Industrial Applications, and Technology Transfer

My general research area is software engineering, particularly in software testing, reliability, safety, and metrics. To make sure that this research is meaningful to practitioners and has a practical impact on industrial practices, I focus on various practical applications and work closely with industrial partners, including IBM, Nortel, Lockheed-Martin, in various aspects, as described below.

1. Web-Based Applications and Open-Source Projects

Web-based systems are playing a more and more important role in modern society today, in providing and delivering information and value to general users and e-commerce customers. Because of the pervasive nature and the massive user population, various existing software engineering approach need to be adapted for web engineering. My focus on this application area is the analysis (via data mining and other analyses), testing, quality assurance, and reliability improvement for such web-based applications. For more information, click here. A closely related area of my application research is in open-source projects. Some particularly topics of interests in this areas include: quality assurance and defect handling, defect and metrics analysis, and quality and process improvement. For more information, click here.

2. Applications in Commercial Software and Systems

Much of my basic research in software engineering was conducted under commercial software environments, such as various software systems developed in IBM. Consequently, much of the application domain information is embedded therein.

3. Applications in Telecommunication Software and Systems

My research in this area concentrates on effective models and techniques that help us evaluate and improve performance and reliability for telecommunication software and systems. Most of my research in this area is conducted in collaboration with and partially supported by Nortel Networks. For more information, click here.

4. Applications in Embedded Software and Systems

The main focus is the application of statistical testing strategies to ensure the reliability of embedded software, and systematic method for overall system safety and reliability. For more information, click here.

5. Applications in OO and CBSE

The main focus is the analysis and evaluation of the quality impact of OOD/OOA/OOM (object-oriented development: design, analysis, and methodology) in real OO projects and systems, and development of effective strategies to assure quality and reliability for such systems. A closely related topic is quality/reliability optimization for component-based software engineering (CBSE). and systematic method for overall system safety and reliability.

6. Technology Transfer

My ultimate research goal is to apply research results to solve practical problems in industry. To do this, technology transfer in collaboration with industrial partners is an essential step. Many of my research results have already been applied in industrial and government labs such as in the IBM SWS Toronto Laboratory, Nortel Networks, and NASA Software Engineering Laboratory. This kind of applications and deployment also serves as the test-bed to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of new techniques, methods, and tools developed, and can stimulate further development, refinement and even breakthroughs in software engineering research.


Prepared by Jeff Tian (tian@engr.smu.edu).
Last update July 7, 2003.

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