Dear Choose members,

We invite you to an exciting Choose SigBeer talk by Prof David Notkin and hope that many of you will attend. After the talk there will be an apéro for informal Q&A.

best wishes, Harald Gall

---- Date: September 5, 2008, 14.00, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, OG 2, Room 2.A.01 http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/ifi/how_to_reach_us/

Title: Software engineering research: just imagine if we didn't ignore reality

Abstract: Software is, of course, crucial to society, and thus we must continue to improve our ability to effectively engineer software and software- intensive systems. Software is also heavily criticized -- both internally and externally -- for high costs, for high project failure rates, for not improving at the rate of hardware, etc. But are these and related criticisms indeed accurate -- even when backed by data -- and, even if they are, in what ways will they lead us towards our goal of more effectively engineering software? Reframing questions like these is the primary objective of the talk.

Bio: David Notkin has been on the faculty at the University of Washington since 1984, now serving as Bradley Chair and Professor. He received an Sc.B. from Brown University in 1977 and a Ph.D. from Carnegie- Mellon University in 1984. He has advised nearly 20 Ph.D. students and in 2000 received the University of Washington's Distinguished Graduate Mentor award. He has served as chair of ACM SIGSOFT, program chair/co-chair of the International Conference on Software Engineering and of the 1st ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, and is currently editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. He has spent sabbaticals at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Osaka University, IBM Haifa Research Lab, and Lund University. Until now, he has only been in Zurich's airport and train stations.

His homepage: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/notkin/