Spotlight

ISR Hosts Visitors from NTT Software Innovation Center

Dr. Saito, Mr. Horikawa, Mr. Oka, and Prof. van der Hoek.From July 1, 2016 through December 30, 2017, ISR is hosting visiting researcher Dr. Shinobu Saito, Senior Research Engineer at the NTT Software Innovation Center (NTT SIC), Software Engineering Project, in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Saito’s research interests are in software requirements engineering, design recovery, business modeling, and business process management. During his stay at ISR, Dr. Saito has been interacting with Prof. André van der Hoek and Prof. Jim Jones, among others. Dr. Saito’s managers and colleagues from NTT SIC, Software Engineering Project have also made shorter visits to ISR, cultivating a deeper relationship between our organizations.

In February, ISR was delighted to host a visit by Saito’s manager Mr. Keitaro Horikawa, Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor and Group Leader, and Mr. Eiichi Oka, Senior Research Engineer and Supervisor. Prof. van der Hoek met with Saito, Horikawa, and Oka, exchanging ideas on a collaborative environment for agile and lean software development, IoT issues, humanmachine interfaces, and various machine learning topics. Prof. van der Hoek provided them with a number of technical suggestions, and gave pointers to related research.

Mr. Hoshino, Mr. Kurabayashi, Mr. Tanno, Mr. Kirinuki, Dr. Saito, and Prof. Jones.ISR was pleased to host a second group of NTT SIC Software Engineering Project visitors in April. The group was comprised of Mr. Takashi Hoshino, Project Manager, and three of his software testing team Researchers: Mr. Haruto Tanno; Mr. Toshiyuki Kurabayashi; and Mr. Hiroyuki Kirinuki. Prof. Jones met with Dr. Saito and the group, and presented an overview of his research in software debugging and maintenance. The three NTT SIC researchers gave presentations on their research in software regression test, software fault localization, and automated program repair. Jones provided practical advice on their topics, pointed them to several studies, and recommended pertinent papers. He encouraged them to submit papers to international conferences such as ICST and ICSME. Jones motivated them, saying “If the paper is rejected, never give up!” The group also visited with Prof. van der Hoek and discussed key research challenges faced by NTT, the work by Dr. Saito during his stay here, and also the writing of research papers and submission of them to key conferences, such as ICSE and its SEIP track.

“The visits from NTT colleagues have been very productive for both partners,” says Prof. van der Hoek. “By exchanging knowledge and ideas, research products for both NTT and UC Irvine benefit. It has been constructive getting to know the practical challenges being faced at NTT, and beneficial for my students to learn about—and have their work influenced by— these challenges. Simply being in an ivory tower as an academic is just not what we do here at ISR!”

This article appeared in ISR Connector issue: