Friday, July 29, 2016

Great Presence of Illinois ASE in FSE 2016

Illinois ASE members will have a great presence in the 24th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2016), Seattle, WA, November 2016:

[1] Xuan Li, Zerui Wang, Qianxiang Wang, Shoumeng Yan, Tao Xie, and Hong Mei. Relationship-Aware Code Search for JavaScript Frameworks. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2016), Seattle, WA, November 2016.  [PDF]

[2] Xia Zeng, Dengfeng Li, Wujie Zheng, Fan Xia, Yuetang Deng, Wing Lam, Wei Yang, and Tao Xie. Automated Test Input Generation for Android: Are We Really There Yet in an Industrial Case? In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2016), Industrial Track, Seattle, WA, November 2016. [PDF]

[3] Benjamin Busjaeger and Tao Xie. Learning for Test Prioritization: An Industrial Case Study. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2016), Industrial Track, Seattle, WA, November 2016. 
 [PDF]

[4] Wing Lam. Repairing Test Dependence. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2016), Student Research Competition, Seattle, WA, November 2016.


One FSE 2016 Industrial Track paper [2] describes some initial results of ongoing high-impact collaborations between Illinois ASE and Tencent Inc. on testing WeChat, a highly popular messenger app with over 762 million monthly active users.

The other FSE 2016 Industrial Track paper [3] describes some initial results of ongoing high-impact collaborations between Illinois ASE and Salesforce.com on improving testing practices at Salesforce.com.


These 2 papers are among the 6 papers accepted out of 31 submissions in the FSE 2016 Industrial Track.


Congratulations to Tao Xie for being honored as a Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator

Professor Tao Xie, the lead of the Illinois ASE group, was recently honored as one of 32 Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborators worldwide.

In the 25 years since its founding in 1991, Microsoft Research has grown to be a worldwide symbol of excellence in computer science. Our over 1,000 scientists, engineers, and designers produce technologies that change the lives of people every day through their innovative software, systems, and designs. The Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award 2016 highlight and celebrate some of the amazing academics who have worked with us over the years.

Per Tao's biography in the Outstanding Collaborator Award Booklet (see the extracted page for Tao's biography here), "Tao Xie has collaborated with Microsoft Research (MSR) over the last decade. As a visiting researcher in the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group, he personally contributed a core search algorithm for the automated test generation feature IntelliTest, which shipped as part of Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise Edition. Even more influential were his frequent visits to Microsoft Research in Redmond and China, which spawned dozens of collaborative projects. His students prototyped many new ideas on top of platforms and tools provided by MSR, in particular on the Pex4Fun project established by Nikolai Tillmann and Peli de Halleux. Over the years, Tao also deeply engaged with Dongmei Zhang and the Software Analytics group in China. This resulted in more than 60 joint high-profile publications in areas including automated test generation, computer science education, and software analytics."

Congratulations to Tao and our Illinois ASE!!! Such award is a recognition on the high impact that Illinois ASE has been making together with industrial collaborators such as Microsoft Research!!



ASEer Angello Astorga Awarded 2016 GEM Full Fellowship

Our ASEer PhD student Angello Astorga was awarded a 2016 GEM Full Fellowship. In 2016, only 54 PhD students in the USA received such honor as 2016 GEM Full Fellows. Congratulations, Angello!!!


Quentin Mayo Wrapping Up His Summer Internship at Illinois ASE

Quentin Mayo, a PhD student from the University of North Texas, spent his summer months at Illinois ASE, working on software security problems. He presented his poster during the ITI 2016 Science of Security Poster Session today. Well done, Quentin!!




Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Illinois Software Engineering Ranked No 1 in Computer Science Rankings (beta)

Computer Science Rankings (beta) was developed and is maintained by Emery Berger, a CS Professor from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

According to the website, "Currently, this database includes US and selected Canadian and European CS or EECS departments (or equivalent); other institutions will be added in the near future." The rankings are based on counts of papers published in top venues in a specific research area. For example, the rankings consider three top conferences in software engineering: ASE, FSE, ICSE.

The website allows to produce rankings for all CS areas or for a specific CS area.

As of August 14, 2016, the Top 5 CS departments ranked in the website across all CS areas remain the same as the ones in the US News. In other words, Illinois CS is ranked No. 5. Here is the archived snapshot of the ranking shown on the website.

When considering only the software engineering area, Illinois CS is ranked No. 1. Here is the archived snapshot of the ranking shown on the website. 

Although impact should be what we pursue and are proud of, it is nice to see our software engineering area at Illinois CS gets good recognition in such rankings.