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.
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.
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.
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.
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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