Invited Seminars

Invited Seminars are special speaking engagements usually associated with a Distinguished Lecture being held later the same day.

Spring 2008

February

Visualizing and Measuring the Success of Fault Prediction Models

Dr. Thomas J. Ostrand
AT&T Labs
Florham Park, New Jersey

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
11:00 a.m., Room 302 HRBB

Abstract

Software fault prediction has recently become an important topic of software engineering research, and several groups are investigating ways to predict which parts of a system are most likely to contain faults in the future. No one can expect perfect identification of future faults, so it is important to evaluate the relative success of different models and prediction techniques, and to find a common scale by which they can be compared. We will discuss some frequently-used measures and show several ways to visualize the success rate of fault predictions. We'll show how the measures apply to fault predictions that the AT&T research group has made for large systems.

Biography

Tom Ostrand is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs in New Jersey. His research areas are software fault analysis and prediction, software testing, and empirical software engineering. Tom is a member of ACM and ACM-SIGSOFT, and is a past member of the SIGSOFT Executive Committee. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering, the Program Chair for the Workshop on Predictor Models for Software Engineering (PROMISE), and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). He was formerly in the Computer Science department of Rutgers University, and the software research divisions of Sperry Univac and Siemens Corporate Research.

Faculty Contact: Valerie E. Taylor (taylor [at] cs.tamu.edu)

Fall 2008

October

The Role of Molecular Imaging in the Discovery of New Drugs and Therapies

Mark Lenox
Department of Computer Science
University of Tennessee

Monday, October 13, 2008
2:00 p.m., Room 302 HRBB

Abstract

Molecular imaging involves the measurement of chemical concentrations of specific compounds in living tissue at the molecular level. It provides medical doctors and researchers with important information and enables new insight in the study and management of disease. This new level of information is changing medicine, making it more individualized, and much more effective. We will discuss what molecular imaging is, as well as the technology that enables it and some case studies in research. This includes recent advances in nanotechnology that are enabling new and innovative cancer therapies. Molecular imaging, applied here at TAMU, will help to bring those technologies to fruition.

Biography

Mark Lenox has spent most of his career applying computer and software technology to difficult problems. He graduated from Arizona State in 1989 with a BSE in Systems Engineering, then again in 1990 with an MSEE from Texas A&M. After working for a couple of years in Dallas, TX, he took a job working at a small startup company in Knoxville, TN by the name of CTI Molecular Imaging. His first job at CTI involved architecting a new software package for their PET tomographs, which was done in C++. After that, Mark moved over into hardware and developed a new high performance hardware platform using FPGAs to perform digital nuclear pulse processing at very high speed. With these tools in hand, he was made the Lead Engineer and project manager for the High Resolution Research Tomograph. The HRRT was a collaboration between CTI and the Max-Plank Institute of Neurological Imaging, and it represented an all-out effort to build the most powerful imager of the human brain ever devised, and the first to use the new generation of digital electronics. Even though the original plan was to build one unit, the program was very successful and expanded to 17 units due to extreme demand. These were placed at the most prestigious neurological research institutes worldwide to aid their research in diseases such as Stroke, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and other dementias. With the HRRT program finished, Mark was named Director of New Product Development for the Preclinical Division of CTI Molecular. There he led the development of several new systems designed specifically for research work in the development of new drugs and the study of disease. In 2005, CTI Molecular was sold to Siemens for $1B. Mark has one patent currently granted with several more in the PTO pipeline, and around 20 publications in PET instrumentation with at least that many more in imaging applications. He lives in Knoxville Tennessee with his wife and two children, and is currently working as a consultant while he finishes a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Tennessee.

Faculty Contact: Valerie E. Taylor (taylor [at] cs.tamu.edu)