Illinois ASE Group Pre-Holiday Gathering

Illinois ASE Group Pre-Holiday Gathering on November 13, 2015 for celebrating the achievements of the group, with food, drink and board games! See the ASEers' happy faces and good food below! (Two ASEers Wesley and David were absent due to other things.)

Tao Xie's Collaboration on Pex Benefits Microsoft and CS Education (An Illinois CS Click! Magazine article)

Since the mid-2000s, CS Professor Tao Xie has been working with Microsoft Research to develop more effective software testing methods, helping the company improve the utility and impact of its software development tools. At the same time, Microsoft Research has facilitated the development of educational resources for use in teaching computer science. Xie’s collaboration is an excellent example of how interactions between industry and academia can provide benefits to both spheres.

Read the full story in an Illinois CS Click! Magazine article on "Xie’s Collaboration on Pex Benefits Microsoft and CS Education"

Congratulations to Ping on Winning the 2015 ACM Mid-Central USA Programming Contest and Moving on to Compete in the ACM-ICPC World Finals 2016 in Thailand

Siwakorn (Ping) Srisakaokul is one the three members in an Illinois CS Team (Poor Man's Shield) competing in the 2015 Mid-Central Regional contest for the ACM’s annual International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) on Saturday, November 7, 2015. The team won the competition against strong opponents from other top institutions in the regional contest such as University of Chicago and Northwestern. More details about the contest are here.

Ping's team will move on to compete in the ACM-ICPC World Finals 2016 in Thailand (Ping's home country!) next May!! Wish Ping's team the best in the World Finals!

Professor Tao Xie Named a 2015 ACM Distinguished Scientist

Recently Professor Tao Xie, the lead of the Illinois ASE Group, was named a 2015 ACM Distinguished Scientist for his contributions (along with his team's contributions) in the field of Computer Science!

From the ACM 2015 Distinguished Members Press Release: 

"The 2015 ACM Distinguished Members are drawn from leading academic institutions, as well as corporate and national research laboratories around the world. Demonstrating the global nature of ACM, the roster of 2015 ACM Distinguished Members hail from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, Egypt, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Portugal, Qatar, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Areas of specialty of the 2015 Distinguished Members include curriculum design, systems design and architecture, critical systems security, internet structure and security, high performance computing, human-computer interaction, programming languages, mobile and wireless networks, database management, and software engineering. The criteria for selection to the Distinguished Member grade include at least 15 years of professional experience, five years of continuous ACM membership, and significant accomplishments or impact within the computing field." 

Congratulations Tao!

Congratulations to Angello Astorga Awarded a Scholarship to Attend 2016 Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop

Illinois ASE PhD student Angello Astorga has been awarded a scholarship to attend the 2016 Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop. This year's workshop is being held in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Congratulations, Angello!

Collaborator Huoran Li Presented IMC 2015 Paper

Collaborator Huoran Li (Peking University), advised by Professor Xuanzhe Liu (Peking University) presented the following IMC 2015 paper:

Huoran Li, Xuanzhe Liu, Tao Xie, Kaigui Bian, Xuan Lu, Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Qiaozhu Mei, and Feng Feng.
Characterizing Smartphone Usage Patterns from Millions of Android Users.In Proceedings of the 2015 Internet Measurement Conference
(IMC 2015), Tokyo, Japan, October 2015.
Download: [PDF][BibTeX]

Congratulations to Angello, Ore, Ping, Wing, & Wesley for their fellowship awards!

Angello Astorga was named a Google Generation Scholarship and State Farm Companies Foundation Docotoral Scholar!
Ore (Oreoluwa) Alebiosu was named a Siebel Scholar!

Ping (Siwakorn) Srisakaokul and Wing Lam was awarded the Ray Ozzie Computer Science Fellowship!
Wesley Brooks was awarded an Illinois Cyber Security Scholarship!

Congratulations to Ping on being No. 1 in UIUC ACM-ICPC second tryout

To determine teams to represent UIUC in The 2015 Mid-Central USA Regional ACM-ICPC Contest, UIUC held two rounds of tryouts on September 19th and October 3rd. The contests run for 5 hours. Siwakorn (Ping) Srisakaokul won the second round of tryouts by solving all 11 of the problems with over 80 minutes left. He also won the first round of tryouts.
The full contest scoreboard for the second tryout is available on the UIUC-ICPC website.

Congratulations to Ore for being named a Siebel Scholar

Oreoluwa Alebiosu, a MS student in our ASE Illinois group, has been named a Siebel Scholar for the Class of 2016. He is one of the five students in CS @ Illinois who have received this award this year. In recognition of their outstanding academic record and leadership, these students will receive $35,000 during their final year of study.

Read more here.

Collaborator Yun Ma Presented WWW 2015 Paper

Collaborator Yun Ma (Peking University) presented the following WWW 2015 paper:

Yun Ma, Shuhui Zhang, Xuanzhe Liu, Ruirui Xiang, Yunxin Liu, and Tao Xie.
Measurement and Analysis of Mobile Web Cache Performance.
In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web
(WWW 2015), Florence, Italy, May 2015.
Download: [PDF]

David Yang Presented ICSE 2015 Paper on AppContext

David Yang presented the following ICSE 2015 paper on AppContext:

Wei Yang, Xusheng Xiao, Benjamin Andow, Sihan Li, Tao Xie, and William Enck.
AppContext: Differentiating Malicious and Benign Mobile App Behavior Under Contexts.
In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering
(ICSE 2015), Florence, Italy, May 2015.
Download: [PDF]

Collaborator Judith Bishop Presented ICSE 2015 JSEET Paper on Code Hunt

Collaborator Judith Bishop (Microsoft Research) presented the following ICSE 2015 JSEET Paper on Code Hunt:

Judith Bishop, Nigel Horspool, Tao Xie, Nikolai Tillmann, and Jonathan de Halleux.
Code Hunt: Experience with Coding Contests at Scale.
In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering 
(ICSE 2015), JSEET, Florence, Italy, May 2015.
Download: [PDF]

Ore Alebiosu and Teammates Won 2015 MadHacks Wisconsin Idea Prize

At MadHacks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison held April 18-19, Reese teamed up yet again with Milla and added teammates Oreoluwa Alebiosu and Anil Jason to create UpTalk, another project to help learners speak with native speakers. This hackathon was more constricted, entailing just 24 hours rather than the typical 36.

Despite the shortened time, the team developed four working components for UpTalk: a chat system for communicating with people around the world, a chat bot for practicing when live speakers were unavailable, a conversation game to help teach context flow in conversations, and personal learning statistics and feedback to make learning more like a game.

With UpTalk, the team won the Wisconsin Idea Prize and will be representing the university at an all-expense paid trip to the Global Hackathon in Seoul, South Korea, July 29-August 1, which they are all looking forward to attending.

Read more about the MadHacks here.

At MadHacks, Reese and his teammates won the Wisconsin Idea Prize for their project UpTalk. From left: Anil Jason, Joseph Milla, Oreoluwa Alebiosu, and Thomas Reese.

Siwakorn "Ping" Srisakaoku Won a Code Hunt Contest at UW Organized by Microsoft Research

Siwakorn "Ping" Srisakaoku, currently an undergraduate student at University of Washington CSE Department and incoming PhD student in our Illinois ASE group, won awarded a Code Hunt contest at UW organized by Microsoft Research.

Read more here.

Read more about Code Hunt here.

Judith Bishop from Microsoft Research (left) awarded the prize to Siwakorn "Ping" Srisakaoku (center)

Angello Astorga Awarded a Generation Google Scholarship

Angello Astorga, currently an undergraduate student at Ohio State University CS Department and incoming PhD student in our Illinois ASE group, has been awarded a Generation Google Scholarship.

Read more about the scholarship here.

Tao Xie Guest-Edited IEEE Software's Special Issue on Software Engineering for Internet Computing: Internetware and Beyond

Antonia Bertolino, M. Brian Blake, Pankaj Mehra, Hong Mei, and Tao Xie. Software Engineering for Internet Computing: Internetware and Beyond. IEEE Software, Software Engineering for Internet Computing: Internetware and Beyond, Guest Editors' Introduction, Volume 32, Issue 1, pages 35-37, January/February, 2015.

Read more here.

Listen more here: audio interview with guest editors

Log2 Paper Accepted as a USENIX ATC 2015 Research Paper

Rui Ding, Hucheng Zhou, Jian-Guang Lou, Hongyu Zhang, Qingwei Lin, Qiang Fu, Dongmei Zhang, and Tao Xie. Log2: A Cost-Aware Logging Mechanism for Performance Diagnosis. In Proceedings of the 2015 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 2015), Santa Clara, CA, June 2015.

Code Hunt Paper Accepted as an ICSE 2015 JSEET Paper

Judith Bishop, Nigel Horspool, Tao Xie, Nikolai Tillmann, and Jonathan de Halleux. Code Hunt: Experience with Coding Contests at Scale. In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2015), JSEET, Florence, Italy, May 2015.
[PDF] Acceptance Ratio: 28%: 20 full+7 short/72
Read more here: the Code Hunt Game homepage

Paper Accepted as a WWW 2015 Research Paper

Yun Ma, Shuhui Zhang, Xuanzhe Liu, Ruirui Xiang, Yunxin Liu, and Tao Xie. Measurement and Analysis of Mobile Web Cache Performance. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW 2015), Florence, Italy, May 2015.
[PDF] Acceptance Ratio: 14%

AppContext Paper Accepted as an ICSE 2015 Research Paper

Wei Yang , Xusheng Xiao, Benjamin Andow, Sihan Li , Tao Xie , and William Enck. AppContext: Differentiating Malicious and Benign Mobile App Behavior Under Contexts. In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering 
(ICSE 2015), Florence, Italy, May 2015.

[PDF] Acceptance Ratio: 19%

Tao Xie Chosen as Willett Scholar

Tao Xie was among ten faculty in the College of Engineering selected as Donald Biggar Willett Scholars for 2015. This recognition is targeted for faculty members who, at a relatively early stage in their careers, are excelling in their contributions to the University of Illinois.

Read more here.