Keynote Speakers
-
How can we make industry adopt formal methods?
Wednesday 09:30 - 10:30, 29 October 2008
Professor Takuya Katayama, Ph D.
President of Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
Despite a long history of technical development of formal methods and their success in advanced system developments, they are not well recognized nor accepted as effective and standard methodology in industrial and commercial software development. This fact should be considered seriously if we evaluate their intrinsic technical superiority. Though ignorance of the new technologies will be one reason for the reluctance of industry to use formal methods, we should also check if current formal methods will be enough for the real software development practices in industry. In this talk, based on interviews with software engineers and managers, these issues will be addressed including proposal of formal methods adoptable in industry.
-
Programmers Ain't Mathematicians, and Neither are Testers
Thursday 09:00 - 10:00, 30 October 2008
Professor Jeff Offutt, Ph D.
Professor of Software Engineering
Department of Computer Science in Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering George Mason University, USAFormal methods have been developed for decades. An early promise was that we could use formal methods to "prove" our programs correct. We have also tried to use formal methods to completely specify functional behavior of programs and to partially specify specific aspects of software behavior. Research into formal methods have led to weaker techniques to "model" functional behavior, less completely and less precisely, but in ways that are easier to use. Despite these years of activity, formal methods are still seldom used in industry. As software engineering researchers, we are compelled to take the view that there must be a path from our research to actual use in industry, where real software developers use our ideas to help create real, and better, software. Thus we must ask, are formal methods a solution in search of a problem?
-
Contract-based Reasoning for Verification and Certification of Secure Information Flow Policies in Industrial Workflows
Friday 09:00 - 10:00, 31 October 2008
Professor John Hatcliff, Ph D.
Professor of Department of Computing and Information Sciences at Kansas State University

