2017 ISR Research Forum: Where Research Meets the Real World

ISR held its thirteenth Research Forum on June 2. The goal of the ISR Forum is to foster interaction between industry and ISR researchers, and encourage research collaborations amongst all. The daylong event featured two keynote speakers from industry; seven faculty/staff talks; an Open House with posters and demonstrations of research projects, and a reception with posters to close the day. This year’s Forum attracted 140 attendees from 28 companies and organizations, as well as seven regional and national universities.

“Irvine and Orange County, in general, are home to many technology companies which either sell software solutions or integrate software in their products,” said Interim Director Prof. Cristina Lopes. “ISR’s annual Research Forum is a wonderful event that brings together many software engineers and technologists with UCI faculty and students. Along with the talks, the poster session is a highlight, as it allows participants to talk directly with the graduate students about research, and how it relates to the products developed by local companies. Building relationships between UCI and local industry is one of the main missions of the Institute, and we are delighted that this annual event continues to bring so many software engineering aficionados together.”

The morning keynote, “Lessons from the Jungle of Open Source Big Data Development,” was given by alumnus Dr. Owen O’Malley, Co-Founder and Technical Fellow at Hortonworks. Dr. Peri Tarr, Principal Research Staff Member, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, delivered the afternoon keynote,“Cognitive Software Engineering: Helping Developers Work Successfully in a Cognitive World.”

The seven faculty and staff technical talks covered a broad range of topics: using large datasets in software engineering– Prof. Cristina Lopes; understanding software execution behavior–Prof. Jim Jones; understanding the workplace experience–Prof. Gloria Mark; privacy in an IoT setting–Prof. Alfred Kobsa; legal and policy challenges in attributing cyber attacks–Bryan Cunningham, Director, UCI Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute (CPRI); communication exploits for Android applications– Associate Project Scientist Joshua Garcia; and enhancing industry software practices for compliance with privacy laws and regulations–Prof. Sameer Patil (Indiana University Bloomington).

Twenty-five posters and demos were featured at the Open House, representing nine faculty members’ research groups. Of note: two undergraduate students supervised by Prof. Walt Scacchi participated— see the story about them on page 12.

A bonus this year was a reunion of sorts: almost a dozen members of the Arcadia Research Project were in attendance. The DARPA-funded Arcadia project ran for 10 years, ending in 1997. It focused on investigating tools and techniques to improve the software engineering process, and included researchers from UC Irvine, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as industry partners.

For more information, including videos of the talks and presenters’ slides, visit the Forum website.

And be sure to mark your calendars for the 2018 ISR Research Forum, to be held on Friday, June 8!