It looks like I got my first grant! I got a letter from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research saying that they’ll support my 3-year proposal for research on software plans. This certainly will help my tenure case, not to mention provide support for my two PhD students.
The grants office is talking with the Air Force to work out the details. Hopefully the funding will start to flow in January.
For the last week or so I’ve been working on speeding up an algorithm for formal concept analysis (FCA) that I developed earlier in the year. FCA is a branch of lattice theory in which objects and properties are arranged into maximal sets of related entities. It’s like saying birds lay eggs, mammals nurse their young, but there’s a weird creature called the platypus that doesn’t really fit in either category.
We’re using FCA to build software plans from trace data collected on software that is run with multiple test cases. I developed the algorithm because a tool we were using (ToscanaJ) couldn’t handle the large input we were giving it. Since then we’ve learned of ConExp, which is supposed to be a lot faster. I did a quick comparison of my algorithm to their implementation of the NextClosure algorithm, and it looks like we might beat them. Meghan’s working on a more formal comparison.
Meanwhile I have to turn my attention to a paper… The ICSE formal demo paper deadline is fast approaching…
This week has been crazy. On Monday and Tuesday, Christopher’s CI was activated. I also had my last shot at the NSF CAREER proposal due on Tuesday. Plus John Regehr passed along a call for the Air Force Young Investigator Program, due on Wednesday.
Over the weekend we had a SIGbeer mini-reunion. So I spent the whole weekend polishing off my NSF proposal, then re-writing it for the Air Force submission.
On top of all that, I’m on Ken Blakely’s thesis committee, which was meeting Wednesday morning for his proposal. I kinda totally forgot about that, but was able to get there in time for the questions, and I met with Ken later in the day.
Whew! Things are starting to get back to normal now. There are 2 or 3 more proposals coming up in the fall, and a couple papers as well, but for now I can take a breath and get some work done.
The last few weeks I’m been spending all my non-teaching time implementing the next version of Spotlight. Spotlight is a plugin for Eclipse that implements the notion of software plans.
Software has been traditionally implemented in one view, compared to the multi-view representations used to represent designs in other disciplines. Source code is a lot like cubist art–every perspective in one representation. My research has tried to provide multiple views of code, thereby more naturally representing concerns of interest separate from irrelevant concerns.
The new implementation is coming along nicely, and hopefully will be ready for public consumption soon.
On Tuesday and Thursday we all went to Delaware. I was invited to give a talk to the “High Performance Computing” group about my research. Their name is a misnomer… It’s really the “Systems” group. I brought Dorothy along since I needed to work on my talk on the way up, and since I didn’t want to leave her stranded at the house without a car. (I could have ridden my motorcycle, but that would mean 5 hours with a suitcase riding behind me.)
The day of my talk Dorothy took Christopher (and the camera) to Longwood, a big indoor garden. So most of the pictures are of flowers:
You’ll need to log in to see pictures of Christopher.
Meanwhile, I met with David Shepherd, one of Lori Pollock’s students, in the morning, had lunch with her and her students, gave my talk, and met with more of Lori’s students in the afternoon. Their research is interesting, but I’m not sure there’s overlap right now.
I learned that their building was an example of “riot architecture” meant to confuse rioting students. Apparently the architects didn’t spend much time on other considerations-the offices were packed into narrow halls.
In the morning my host Martin Swany picked me up a little early so I could listen to a talk by one of their faculty candidates. It was nice to listen to a job talk that was software-oriented… W&M CS hasn’t interviewed a software engineering candidate since I started there.
I spent my spring break climbing Mount Eclipse. Eclipse is a programming environment, and has a nice plugin architecture that allows people like me to extend it to do new things. We’re using it to implement our prototype software plans tool. I’m currently doing a reimplementation of my students previous prototype, cleaning up some of their suboptimal design decisions.
The problem is that Eclipse has a pretty steep learning curve. My students implemented the functionality we needed using some “hacks” that are hurting us now. So I’m trying to figure out the right way to do things. It took me several days to get productive, but it looks like things are moving along now.
The semester’s over, finally. It seemed long because I was teaching a new class in formal software engineering methods. The kids did pretty well, despite the difficulty of the class. Unfortunately the prep work for the class ate up a good chunk of my time.
Now I have to turn my attention back to research. We have a paper due in a couple of days, and a proposal due in January. I’m also trying to get some software development done over the break, and prepare for my class next semester.
Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Been very busy starting up a new course, trying to get two papers submitted, and doing service for my research community.
I’ll try to post a couple updates about the baby today, as well as some photos and movies.
Dorothy and I have been taking Christopher for walks every day. The past couple of days we’ve been walking in Colonial Williamsburg. I started a “Williamsburg, Summer 2005″ album for any pictures and movies I take:
* NOT FOUND *
I’m back working today, after helping Dorothy for a week. I’ve got a couple of papers to review, and a couple to write.