IEEE Reliability Society Student Outreach at the University of Texas at DallasW. Eric Wong The 29th of April, 2011 marked the date for two very special colloquia, as part of an IEEE Reliability Society student outreach event, at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). This event was co-sponsored by the Computer Science (CS) department at UTD and the Dallas Chapter of the Reliability Society, and while students and faculty in particular were encouraged to attend, both colloquia were also open to the general public and attracted many attendees from local industry such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, EDS/HP, and Texas Instruments, to name a few. Also attending were Dennis Hoffman, President of the IEEE Reliability Society; Lon Chase, Vice President for Technical Activities of the IEEE Reliability Society; and Faye Bilger, Chair of the Dallas Chapter of the IEEE Reliability Society. The first colloquium (see Figure 1) was scheduled in the morning and featured speakers — Dr. Jeffrey Voas from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), also the Director of the IEEE Division VI, and Professor Angelos Stavrou from George Mason University (GMU). The focus was on the cyber threats that stem from the capabilities of today's smart devices (such as the iPhone or Google Android) and the online application market for mobile devices including malware, data exfiltration, exploitation through USB, as well as user and data tracking. Also presented was the ongoing NIST/GMU effort to defend against or mitigate the impact of attacks against mobile devices by analyzing the source code and binaries of mobile applications, hardening the Android kernel, using kernel network and data encryption, and controlling the communication mechanism for synchronizing the user contents with computer and other phones. The talk also explained the difficulties in dealing with security issues when the end-goal is to deploy security-enhanced smart phones into military combat settings. Four door prizes provided by the Dallas Chapter were given away at the end.  The second colloquium (see Figure 2) was in the afternoon by Dr. Samuel Keene. The emphasis of the talk is on predicting software reliability. An a priori software reliability prediction model was discussed that projects the latent fault rate of the code being released to the field along with its reliability growth profile after release. The latter results from the on-going fault discovery and subsequent fault removal, while the code is refined over time and usage. The model presented has shape factors that merge code size, historical performance, operational profile, and the capability of the development organization. It helps set the reliability expectations for the new software.  Attendance was very strong for both colloquia. Among the attendees were the students of the graduate course on Software Testing and Verification taught by Professor Eric Wong, as the subject matter of the colloquia was directly related to the materials they were learning in the class. Of special mention was the degree to which the audience participated and actively engaged in question/answer sessions with the speakers, which served to make the colloquia much more interactive and enjoyable. The speakers also often made use of in-class exercises that allowed the audience to be much more involved with the discussion. Each of the presentations made during the colloquia was recorded for subsequent use as educational modules on related subjects. Photographs and videos are posted at http://paris.utdallas.edu/IEEE/StudentOutreach. Special thanks to Professor Mark Spong, Dean of Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UTD, and Professor Gopal Gupta, Head of Computer Science Department at UTD, for their generous support, as well as Mr. Vidroha Debroy, Mr. Tung Dao, Miss Sunnie Feng, Mr. Andy Restrepo and Mr. Xiaofeng Xu - PhD students in Professor Eric Wong's research group at UTD - for assisting with all the logistics. | ||