1. The overall goal of my research is to provide practical, automatic techniques and tools that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of software development and maintenance. In particular, my research to date has employed research areas of program-analysis-based software engineering, testing, machine learning, and information visualization to aid in the processes of testing and debugging.
   

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3. My research addresses the problems of software debugging and maintenance, particularly in the challenges to comprehending the complexities of program logic, its evolution over time, and its dynamic runtime behavior.  Software developers commonly face such challenges in understanding, diagnosing, and fixing bugs in software.  Whereas many software-engineering researchers typically attempt to create techniques to provide fully automatic identification and location of bugs, my approach to such research takes a different tack:  My research addresses the large class of bugs that are caused by logical inconsistencies — an incongruence between the developers' expectation of how the program should behave and the way it actually does.  Such common logical inconsistencies typically require developer attention and comprehension, and usually are not amenable to fully algorithmic location and repair.
   

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5. As such, my goal is to assist software developers performing software maintenance and debugging tasks by facilitating their comprehension of the software and its behavior.  In my research, I place a strong emphasis on practicality and efficiency — preferring potential real-world impact over expensive technical wizardry or inflexible, prescriptive workflow.  I work to enable efficient and effective software engineering by assisting developers and researchers in their cognition of software behavior, with the ultimate goal of equipping them to produce higher quality software, more economically, and with less frustration.
   

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7. Fundamentally, the challenges of software maintenance and debugging are primarily challenges of human comprehension. As examples, my research assists software engineers in understanding:
   

8. •where the bugs reside in the codebase,
   

9. •why the code behaves incorrectly, 
   

10. •who are the developers best equipped to understand and fix problems, and
    

11. •when were the changes made that introduced bugs (and why were they).
    

Research projects and publications that study these topics, and others, are described on my research group’s website.

1. •May 31, 2013. ISR Forum Presentation. Jim will be speaking at the Institute for Software Research (ISR) Research Forum 2013 on May 31. The ISR Research Forum brings together researchers, leaders in industry, and technical practitioners in a multi-disciplinary environment to: discuss current research areas and technical trends in the fields of software development and interactive and collaborative technologies; showcase current ISR research; formulate visions on strategic future research and technological directions; and encourage interaction among academia and industry through exchange of ideas and sharing of experiences. Jim's talk will be titled "What is Your Code's Behavior Telling You? Using Evidence to Automate Software Maintenance." You can read more about the Forum at: http://www.isr.uci.edu/events/Research-Forum-2013/
   

2. •May 21, 2013. NFRS Presentation. Jim is speaking at the New Faculty and Researchers Symposium, which is associated with ICSE 2013 in San Francisco. Jim will be sharing his experience as a tenure-track professor in order to help, encourage, and support members of the community who have just started or are about to start their professional research careers.
   

3. •May 20, 2013. CfP for VISSOFT NIER. Now, with the deadline for the main track passed, we want to remind and encourage everyone to submit your new and innovative work to the NIER track of VISSOFT 2013. Also, we are accepting tool demonstrations to the TD track. The deadline for submitting your papers is June 28, 2013. The call for papers is at: http://icsm2013.tue.nl/VISSOFT/cfp/
   

4. •May 15, 2013. Attending ICSE. Jim and Ph.D.-students Nicholas and Vijay will be attending the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in San Francisco, California for the week of May 20 to May 24.
   

5. •April 11, 2013. Elected Senate Assembly Representative. Jim was elected as the Faculty Senate Assembly Representative for the UC Irvine Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. His term of service will extend from September 2013 to September 2015.
   

6. •March 31, 2013. FSE Program Committee. Jim is serving on the program committee of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-2014), which will be held in Hong Kong, China in November 2014.
   

7. •January 14, 2013. ICSE Program Committee. Jim is serving on the program committee of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE-2014), which will be held in Hyderabad, India.
   

8. •January 8, 2013. VISSOFT NIER and TD Co-Chair. As Co-Chair with Stephan Diehl, Jim is organizing the New Ideas and Emerging Research (NIER) track and the Tool Demonstration (TD) track of the first annual VISSOFT working conference. Please consider submitting your interactive demos and latest innovative visualization work to these tracks of VISSOFT. We plan to organize a highly engaging and inviting event to inspire each other, communicate our accomplishments, and connect researchers for future possible collaborations. See the call for papers at: http://icsm2013.tue.nl/VISSOFT/cfp/
   

9. •December 26, 2012. VISSOFT Program Committee. Jim is serving on the program committee for the first annual Working Conference on Software Visualization.  The Steering Committees of SoftVis and VisSoft decided to merge and have a single annual event starting in 2013.  The new conference is the IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization and will carry the acronym of VISSOFT.  The first joint conference will be collocated with ICSM in Eindhoven, Netherlands, during September 27-28, 2013.  Alex Telea is the general chair of the first joint conference, while Andreas Kerren and Andi Marcus will serve as the Program Co-chairs.  See more details at: http://icsm2013.tue.nl/VISSOFT/
   

Earlier news and events can be found here.