CSC News

Xie Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Dr. Tao Xie, assistant professor of computer science at NC State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).  This award, valued at $425,000, supports his proposal “Cooperative Developer Testing with Test Intentions.”

These prestigious awards are provided by the NSF in support of faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research with the context of the mission of their organizations.  Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

Xie becomes the 19th NSF CAREER Award winner for the department of computer science at NC State (17th currently on faculty), one of the highest concentrations of any department in the nation.

The award is effective August 1, 2009 through July 31, 2014.

Research Abstract: Developer testing has been widely recognized as an important, valuable means of improving software reliability. However, manual developer testing is often tedious and not sufficient. Automated testing tools can be used to reduce manual testing efforts. This project develops a systematic framework for cooperative developer testing to enable effective, synergetic cooperation between developers and testing tools. This framework centers around test intentions (i.e., what testing goals to satisfy) and consists of four components: intention specification, test generation, test abstraction, and intention inference. The project also includes integrated research and educational plans.

Xie received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2005. Before that, he received an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2002, an M.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 2000, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Fudan University in 1997. His research interests are in software engineering with an emphasis on improving software reliability and dependability. He leads the Automated Software Engineering Research Group at NC State University.

For more information on Dr. Xie, click here.

~coates~