Automated Software Engineering
2001
Keynote Address : Software Assistance Revisited
Bob Balzer
Chief Technical Officer
Teknowledge Corporation
Marina del Rey, California
Abstract
Computer usage has evolved from small special purpose applications to
large COTS products that dominate the landscape. These COTS products
present major challenges for our traditional software assistance
paradigm.
This talk will explore those challenges and suggest research
opportunities for software assistance in interfacing to COTS
products, in integrating them with other components, and in using
them.
Biography
Dr. Robert Balzer received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in
Electrical Engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1964, 1965, and 1966, respectively.
After several years at the Rand Corporation, he left to help form the
University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute
(USC-ISI) and serve as Professor of Computer Science at USC and
Director of ISI's Software Sciences Division.
In 2000, after 28 years at ISI, he left to become the Chief Technical
Officer at Teknowledge Corporation and to open the new headquarters
for Teknowledge's Distributed Systems Group in Marina del Rey. This
group combines Artificial Intelligence, Database, and Software
Engineering techniques to automate the software development process
and support distributed systems. Current research includes wrapping
COTS products to provide safe and secure execution environments,
extend their functionality, and integrate them together;
instrumenting software architectures; and generating systems from
domain specific specifications.
He has served as chairman of SIGART (The ACM Special Interest Group
on Artificial Intelligence); as program chairman for the First
National Conference of the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence; chairman of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for
the 1985 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(IJCAI); program co-chair for the 9th International Conference on
Software Engineering, held in the Spring of 1987 in Monterey,
California, and whose theme was ``Formalizing and Automating the
Software Process'', co-chair for the 1st Intelligent Information
Systems Workshop, held at Niagra-on-the-lake, Ontario, Canada, April,
1991, and co-char of the 4th International Software Architecture
Workshop in 2000. Elected AAAI (American Association for Artificial
Intelligence) Fellow, 1993.