Fundamentals of Engineering

Franck Xia, Ph.D.
Associate Professor,
Department of Computer Science,
Saint John's University
CS Faculty Candidate

March 9, 2001
11 a.m.
Fuller Laboratories (FL 320)

ABSTRACT

Compared to traditional engineering, software development has unique features and is more complicated. In general, the uniqueness of a particular discipline often requires an innovative research. Nevertheless, every engineering discipline must adhere to fundamentals of engineering. One key feature distinguishing engineering from craft is that it relies on theories whereas craft resorts to skills and experience. However, not all knowledge or best industrial practice can be called theory. In this talk, Dr. Xia will present basic requirements of theories which have been well observed not only in all traditional engineering disciplines, but also in computer engineering fields such as pattern recognition. Despite a tremendous advancement achieved, there are still methodological problems in software engineering research. Dr. Xia will discuss how the basic requirements of theories have been overlooked in the past and articulate why we still have difficulties solving crucial problems in software engineering. Yet as far as the problems remain unresolved, it would be hard to imagine software engineering to be a mature discipline, and the impact of our research will be quite limited.

Dr Xia will present his recent work to show how we can challenge these problems through emphasizing a methodological rigor. He will also show when constructing our research agenda from this methodological perspective, there are exciting research opportunities to improve the state of the art of the discipline and explore industrial applications.

Host

Professor Micha Hofri

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Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:05 EDT