Associate Professor, University of Virginia and
Visiting Scientist, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University
Kevin Sullivan
Associate Professor, University of Virginia and
Visiting Scientist, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University
151 Engineer's Way
P.O. Box 400740,
Charlottesville VA, 22904-4740 USA
E-mail: sullivan[AT]cs.virginia.edu
Telephone: +1 (434) 982-2206
FAX at +1 (434) 982-2214
Most recent paper: Kevin Sullivan, Adaptation Architectures, DESRIST 2008.
An unusual upcoming event: Photographic Extravagaria at OOPSLA 2008! (by Dick
Gabriel and Kevin Sullivan). Photographing a technical conference well is
not a matter of point and shoot, nor is it about taking pictures to share with
friends and family. The time is ripe for more serious photojournalism to capture
our community's leaders, its activities, and its human face, and for the use of
artistry to tell stories and get people thinking. In this workshop you will
learn basic technical and aesthetic techniques for good photography and good
conference photography in particular, and you will practice these techniques
during OOPSLA. Work will be critiqued using an artists' workshop process to
enable you to continue learning and improving after the workshop. Participants
will attend a full-day of lectures and interactive learning activities as well
as photograph Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with short, early morning artists'
workshops on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Richard (Dick) Gabriel (IBM
Watson) and I are teaching this workshop, and I invite you to consider joining.
It will be a way for all of us to get better at photography. You can find out
more information here:
http://dreamsongs.com/Feyeraben
What do I think about?
One of the big questions I think about is how to relate the design of complex software and software-intensive systems to business goals and value objectives in . general. I have been working in particular on how to understand the economic value of modular (software) design architectures. Architectures create value in at least two ways. First, they can support the delivery of certain properties for which people are willing to pay. Second, they create options to make follow-on investments to adapt or evolve a design to deliver even more valuable properties. Figuring out to put a value on these options--on the flexibility to vary or adapt a design--is a real challenge, especially to assign a value when benefits are uncertain. How much should one invest in architecture? The emerging field of real options had the potential to provide an intellectual and mathematical handle on such questions. That said, traditional real options techniques (e.g., using Black-Scholes or binomial options pricing techniques) cannot be used directly because they make deep assumptions about the nature and measurability of the underlying uncertainties. These assumptions are generally not valid in the setting of design of unprecedented systems. A lot of what I think about today is how develop and validate options-like models for valuing investments in modular design architectures without falling into one of these traps. I was also a co-author of the recent report from the Software Engineering Institute on Ultra-Large-Scale Systems. Related questions of efficient evolution of very complex systems are central in that report.
CS 101 - Fall 2007
Recent News
Biographical Sketch:
Kevin Sullivan received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University in 1987 and the MS and PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington in 1994. His PhD advisor was David Notkin. He is now Associate Professor and Virginia Engineering Foundation (VEF) Endowed Faculty Fellow in computer science at the University of Virginia, where he has worked since 1994. Kevin's research interests are in software-intensive systems, in general, and in software engineering and languages. more specifically. He recently served as associate editor for the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering and the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering & Methodology, and on the program and executive committees of conferences including the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) and ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL).
Research Interests:
My students and I are broadly interested in the design and engineering of software-intensive systems, with an emphasis on the need for a value-based theory and practice of system design. We have two relatively independent areas of research activity under this theme.
I also lead a major new (2004) multidisciplinary initiative funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the University of Virginia's Vice President for Research. While the specific formulation of the center theme is evolving, it can be said that in general the focus is on failure avoidance in next-generation, software-intensive systems, with a particular emphasis on anticipating, avoiding, and managing failures due to malicious environments.
Selected Recent Professional Activities:
Selected Software Projects:
NSF Workshop on the Science of Design:
In November 2003 I ran an NSF workshop on Science of Design. The results, including position papers, are available here. We are setting up a new web site for the science of design community. Visit it here. It includes suggested readings.
Selected Publications:
Books and Book Chapters
Sullivan, K.J., “Designing Models of Modularity for Component Software,” in Heineman and Councill, eds., Component-Based Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley, to appear, 2001.
Sullivan, K.J., P. Chalasani, S. Jha and V. Sazawal, “Software Design as an Investment Activity: A Real Options Perspective,” in Real Options and Business Srategy: Applications to Decision Making, L. Trigeorgis, consulting editor, Risk Books, November, 1999.
Sullivan, K.J., Salman, M., and Van Evera, S. ``SIOP: A Computerized Nuclear Exchange Model for Civilian Defense Analysts,'' in Eden, L. and Miller, S., eds., Nuclear Arguments, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 1989.
Salman, M., Sullivan, K.J., and Van Evera, S. ``Analysis or Propaganda: Measuring American Strategic Nuclear Capability, 1969-1988,'' in Eden, L. and Miller, S., eds., Nuclear Arguments, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 1989.
Refereed Journal Publications
G. Murphy, D. Notkin and K. J. Sullivan, Software Reflection Models: Bridging the Gap between Design and Implementation, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 27, no. 4, April 2001, pp. 364-380.
J.B. Dugan, K.J. Sullivan and D. Coppit, “Developing a Low Cost High Quality Software Tool for Dynamic Fault Tree Analysis,” IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Vol. 49, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 49 – 59.
B. Boehm and K.J. Sullivan, “Software Economics: Status and Prospects,” Special Millenium Issue, Information and Software Technology, January 2000.
G. Murphy, D. Notkin and K.J. Sullivan, “Software Reflexion Models,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 27,4, 2001, pp. 364-380.
K. Vemuri, J.B. Dugan and K. Sullivan, “Automatic Synthesis of Fault Trees for Computer-Based Systems,'” IEEE Transactions on Reliability, December 1999, pp. 394 – 402.
K.J. Sullivan, M. Marchukov and J. Socha, “Analysis of a Conflict Between Aggregation and Interface Negotiation in Microsoft's Component-Object Model,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, July/August 1999, pp. 584–599.
I.J. Kalet, J.P. Jacky, M.M Austin-Seymour, S.M. Hummel, K.J. Sullivan and J.M. Unger, ``Prism: a New Approach to Radiotherapy Planning Software,'' International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics, 36, 2, 1996, pp. 451--461.
K.J. Sullivan, I.J. Kalet, and D. Notkin, “Evaluating The Mediator Method: Prism as a Case Study,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 22, 8, August, 1996, pp. 563--579.
Sullivan, K.J. and Notkin, D., ``Reconciling Environment Integration and Software Evolution,'' ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 1, 3, July, 1992, pp. 229-268.
Refereed Conference Papers
H. Rajan and K. Sullivan, “Aspect Language Features for Concern Coverage Profiling,” to Appear, Fourth International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD), 2005.
H. Rajan and K. Sullivan, “Classpects: Unifying Aspect- and Object-Oriented Program Design,” to appear, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2005.
K. Sullivan, J. Yang, D. Coppit, S. Khurshid, D. Jackson, “Improving Software Assurance by Bounded Exhaustive Testing,” 2004 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), Boston, July, 2004.
Hridesh Rajan and Kevin Sullivan, “Eos: Instance-Level Aspects for Integrated System Design,” Proceedings of Joint European Software Engineering Conference and ACM Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) 2003, Helsinki, Finland, November 2003.
D. Coppit, R. Painter, and K. Sullivan, “Shared Semantic Domains for Computational Reliability Engineering,” International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Denver, Colorado, November, 2003, pp. 169--180.
J.C. Knight, E. Strunk, and K.J. Sullivan, “Toward a Rigorous Definition of Survivability,” DISCEX 2003, April 22-24, 2003.
D. Coppit and K. Sullivan, “Sound Methods and Tools for Engineering Modeling and Analysis,” International Conference on Software Engineering, Portland, OR, May, 2003.
K.J. Sullivan, Yuanfang Cai and Lin Gu, “Nonmodularity in Aspect Languages: AspectJ as a Case Study,” First International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development,” 2002.
K.J. Sullivan, W.G. Griswold, Y. Cai and B. Hallen, “The Structure and Value of Modularity in Software Design,” Joint Proceedings of the European Software Engineering/ACM SIGSOFT Foundations of Software Engineering Conference (ESEC/FSE), Vienna, September 2001.
K.J. Sullivan and A. Saxena, “An Architectural Aspect for the Emerging Computational Tapestry,” 2001 International Conference on Software Engineering,” May 2001.
K.J. Sullivan, M. Shaw, B. Boehm, D. Notkin and W. Harrison, “Third International Workshop on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research,” Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), May 2001, p. 770.
D. Coppit, K.J. Sullivan and J.B. Dugan, “Formal Semantics of Models for Computational Engineering: A Case Study on Dynamic Fault Trees,” 2000 International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, October, 2000, pp. 270-282.
H. Zhu, S. Zhou, J.B. Dugan and K.J. Sullivan, “A benchmark for Quantitative Fault Tree Reliability Analysis,” 2001 Proceedings of the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, January, 2001, pp. 86 – 93.
D. Jackson and K.J. Sullivan, “COM Revisited: Tool-Assisted Modeling and Analysis of Complex Software Structures,” SIGSOFT 2000, ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, November, 2000.
Coppit, D. and K.J. Sullivan, “Mass-Market Packages as Software Components,” Proc. 2000 International Conference on Software Engineering, Limerick, June 5–8, 2000.
K.J. Sullivan, “The 2nd International Workshop on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research,” Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, June 4 – 11, 2000, p. 811.
B. Boehm and K.J. Sullivan, invited paper, “Software Economics: A Roadmap,” 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, June, 2000.
J.C. Knight, K.J. Sullivan, M. Elder, “Survivability Architectures,” Proceedings of DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition (DISCEX), January 25—27, 2000.
J.B. Dugan, K.J. Sullivan and D. Coppit, “The Design of a High Quality Fault Tree Analysis Tool,” Proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, November 1999.
M.A. Copenhafer and K.J. Sullivan, “Tool Supported Exploration of Large Component Properties,” Proceedings of the Automated Software Engineering Conference, pp. 7—14, October, 1999.
K.J. Sullivan, D. Coppit, and J.B. Dugan, “The Galileo Fault Tree Analysis Tool,” Proceedings of the 29th International Symposium on Fault Tolerant Computing, pp. 232--235, June 1999.
K.J. Sullivan, J.C. Knight, X. Du and S. Geist, “Information Survivability Control Systems,” Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 184--193, May 1999.
R.W. Manian, D. Coppit, K. Sullivan and J.B. Dugan, “Bridging the Gap Between Fault Tree Analysis Modeling Tools and the Systems Being Modeled,” Proceedings of the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, January, 1999.
K.K Vemuri, J.B. Dugan and K. Sullivan, “A Design Language for Automatic Synthesis of Fault Trees,” Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, January 1999, pp. 91--96.
D. Coppit and K.J. Sullivan, Formal Specification in Collaborative Design of Critical Software Tools,” Proceedings of the High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, 1998, pp. 13--20.
R. Manian, J.B. Dugan, D. Coppit and K.J. Sullivan, “Combining Various Solution Techniques in Dynamic Fault Tree Analysis,” Proceedings of the High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, 1998, pp. 21--28.
Sullivan, K and J.C. Socha, “Using Formal Methods to Reason about Architectural Standards,” Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering, Boston, May 17--24, 1997, pp. 503--513.
Sullivan, K and Knight, J.C., “Experience Assessing an Architectural Approach to Large-Scale Systematic Reuse,” Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Engineering, Berlin, March, 1996, pp. 220--229.
Murphy, G., Notkin, D. and Sullivan, K., “Software Reflexion Models: Bridging the Gap between Source and High-Level Models,” Proceedings of the Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (SIGSOFT 95), October, 1995.
Notkin, D., Garlan, D., Griswold, W.G., and Sullivan, K., “Adding Implicit Invocation to Languages: Three Approaches,” Proceedings of the JSSST International Symposium on Object Technologies for Advanced Software, (November 1993). (Also appears as a Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume \#742.)
Sullivan, K.J. and Notkin, D., “Reconciling Component Independence and Environment Integration,” Proceedings of SIGSOFT90: Fourth Symposium on Software Development Environments, 1990, Irvine, CA.
A Few Interesting Old Reads