[Colloq] Hiring talk by Jan Vitek, 2/26/14 at 2PM, 366 WVH

[Francoise Niang]

Talk: Repeatability, Reproducibility and Rigor by Jan Vitek

Wednesday February 26th, 2014 at 2PM in 366WVH


ABSTRACT:
Computer systems research spans sub-disciplines that include embedded systems,
programming languages, networking, and operating systems. In this talk my
contention is that a number of structural factors inhibit quality systems
research. Symptoms of the problem include unrepeatable and unreproduced results
as well as results that are either devoid of meaning or that measure the wrong
thing. I will illustrate the impact of these issues on our research output with
examples from the development and empirical evaluation of the Schism real-time
garbage collection algorithm. Solutions that focus on fostering repeatability
are being adopted by a number of ACM conference under the name of Artifact
Evaluation Committees or AECs. These AECs provide positive feedback to authors
that take the time to create repeatable research.


BIO:
Jan Vitek is a Professor of Computer Science and University Faculty Scholar. He
is the Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages
(SIGPLAN), the vice chair of AITO and of the IFIP WG 2.4, and is Chief Scientist
at Fiji Systems. He holds a PhD from the University of Geneva and a MSc from the
University of Victoria. He works on various aspects of programming languages
including virtual machines, compilers, software engineering, real-time and
embedded computing, concurrency and information security. Prof. Vitek led the
Ovm project which resulted in the first succefull flight test of real-time Java
virtual machine. With Noble and Potter, Vitek proposed the notion of ownership
for alias control, which became known as ownership types. He chaired PLDI, ISMM
and LCTES and was program chair of ESOP, ECOOP, VEE, Coordination, and TOOLS.
Vitek has started a number of successful workshop series, including MOS on
Mobile Objects, IWACO, on aliasing and confinement, and TRANSACT on
transactional memory. He is on the steering committees of ECOOP, JTRES,
TRANSACT, ICFP, OOPSLA, POPL, PLDI and LCTES. He is a member of the JSR-302
Safety Critical Java expert group.

Host: Matthias Felleisen