Software is essential to applications critical to our everyday lives, including those in transportation, communications, finance, medicine, nuclear power generation, and aeronautics. A failure of these systems will not only cause inconvenience, but may also introduce severe consequences such as property damage, injury, and even human casualty, so it is imperative that we ensure their reliable and trustworthy operation. On the other hand, the increasing complexity of such systems and the continuous pressure to develop them in a more cost-effective way makes our task extremely challenging. A comprehensive solution to these problems consists of technology development and transfer, standards establishment and application, case studies, automation and empirical evaluation, and tool support. In response to this challenge, RS has created a tutorial certificate program funded by the IEEE Future Direction Committee, training the U.S. workforce for competence on selected topics that are essential to success.

The certificate program covers topics such as an introduction to software reliability concepts and analysis techniques, their applications across the software development lifecycle, review of the limits, pros, and cons of different models and tools, solutions to reliability underestimates or overestimates, and use of techniques such as failure modes, effects and criticality. The emphasis will be on both fundamental and advanced topics related to the application of software reliability to help practitioners produce more reliable and trustworthy software in a cost-effective way.

The program requires attending three classes at selected conferences sponsored by RS. Timeliness of the material requires that the training be completed within two years of the first class. Upon completion, each participant will receive an IEEE RS certificate as well as a letter explaining all the classes attended.

The first program will be offered on October 2 at QSIC 2014 (International Conference on Quality Software; http://paris.utdallas.edu/qsic14/) in Dallas, Texas. Additional classes will be given at ISSRE 2014 (International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering; http://issre.net/) and SERE 2015 (International Conference on Software Security and Reliability; http://paris.utdallas.edu/sere15/).

Send all inquiries to Professor W. Eric Wong (ewong@utdallas.edu) at the Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, or visit the website http://paris.utdallas.edu/RS-Certificate for more details.

An RS Tutorial Certificate Program on Software Reliability

W. Eric Wong Secretary IEEE Reliability Society

W. Eric Wong
Secretary
IEEE Reliability Society