Keynote & Invited Speakers, and
Plenary Panel on Security of IoT


Professor Lionel Briand (University of Luxembourg)
   Editor-in-Chief, Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)
   (Monday, August 3, 2015)  [more...]

Professor Elisa Bertino (Purdue University)
   Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and
   Secure Computing (TDSC)
   (Monday, August 3, 2015)  [more...]

Professor Jifeng He (East China Normal University)
   Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences
   (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)  [more...]

Professor Shaoying Liu (Hosei University, Japan)
   (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)  [more...]
 
Professor Tsong Yueh Chen
   (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia)
   (Wednesday, August 5, 2015)  [more...]
 
Plenary Panel on Security of IoT (Internet of Things)
   Professor Steve Yau (Arizona State University)
   Dr. Jeff Voas (NIST)
   Professor Elisa Bertino (Purdue University)
   Dr. Tim Grance (NIST)
   (Wednesday, August 5, 2015) [more...]
 

Tutorial

Professor Karthik Pattabiraman (The University of British
   Columbia)
   Modern Web Applications’ Reliability Engineering
   (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)  [more...]

Dr. Baljeet Malhotra (SAP Canada Inc.)
   Good Governance of Open Source Software and
   Services at Enterprises: Some Key Principles

   (Wednesday, August 5, 2015)  [more...]



Starting from 2015, the SERE conference (IEEE International Conference on Software Security and Reliability) and the QSIC conference (IEEE International Conference on Quality Software) will merge into one large conference QRS, with Q representing Quality, R for Reliability, and S for Security. This enhanced platform, sponsored by the IEEE Reliability Society, will better serve the scientific community as well as the industry. It draws engineers and scientists from both industry and academia to present their ongoing work, relate their research outcomes and experiences, and discuss the best and most efficient techniques for the development of reliable, secure, and trustworthy systems. This presents an excellent opportunity for the academic community to become more aware of subject areas critical to the software industry, as practitioners bring their needs to the table.

The conference has three major tracks: research papers, fast abstracts and the student doctoral program. Included are invited keynote addresses, talks, panels, and tutorials on emerging topics related to the scope of the conference. Additional workshops, more intensely focused, will also be held concurrently.


With its increasing use in many large, complicated systems such as in transportation, medicine, finance, and nuclear power generation, software has become an absolute factor in our everyday lives. Assuring the secure and reliable operation of these systems is of the highest priority, since a failure of such systems can lead to a significant financial loss or even human casualties. In response to this emerging trend, QRS 2015 has a special theme on

Software Quality, Reliability and Security


Special welcome is extended to contributions on the following topics, although others will be accepted as well:

  Reliability, Security, Availability, and Safety of Software Systems
  Software Testing, Verification and Validation
  Program Debugging and Comprehension
  Information and Software Assurance
  Fault Tolerance for Software Reliability Improvement
  Modeling, Prediction, Simulation, and Evaluation
  Metrics, Measurements, and Analysis
  Secure and Reliable Storage
  Software Penetration and Protection
  Software Vulnerabilities
  Formal Methods
  Malware Detection and Analysis
  Intrusion Detection and Prevention
  Operating System Security and Reliability
  Mobile and Smartphone Applications
  Internet of Things and Cloud Computing
  Information and Knowledge Management
  Benchmark, tools, and Empirical Studies

Organizing Committee


General
Chair
Christian Hansen President of IEEE Reliability Society USA
Program
Chairs
Jian Zhang Chinese Academy of Sciences China
Bhavani Thuraisingham University of Texas at Dallas USA
Student Doctoral Program Chair Pete Clarke Florida International University USA
Publicity Chairs Zhenyu Chen Nanjing University China
Fei-Ching Kuo Swinburne University of Technology Australia
Liaison in South America Jose Maldonado University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos Brazil
Liaison in Europe Karama Kanoun LAAS-CNRS France
Publication Chair Yu-Lun Huang National Chiao Tung University Taiwan
Finance Chair W. Eric Wong University of Texas at Dallas USA
Local Chair Karthik Pattabiraman University of British Columbia Canada
Webmaster Shou-Yu Lee University of Texas at Dallas USA


Program Committee


Doo-Hwan Bae Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Korea
Ebrahim Bagheri Ryerson University Canada
Roberto Bagnara BUGSENG and University of Parma Italy
Sébastien Bardin Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) France
Kai-Yuan Cai Beihang University China
W. K. Chan City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
Morris Chang Iowa State University USA
Frederic Dadeau University of Franche-Comté France
Massimiliano Di Penta University of Sannio Italy
Junhua Ding East Carolina University USA
Tadashi Dohi Hiroshima University Japan
Wei Dong National University of Defense Technology China
Xinshu Dong Advanced Digital Sciences Center Singapore
Yunwei Dong Northwestern Polytechnical University China
Catherine Dubois National School of Computer Science for Industry and Business France
Lydie du Bousquet Joseph Fourier University France
Mahmoud Omar Elish King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals Saudi Arabia
Sudipto Ghosh Colorado State University USA
Rajiv Gupta University of California, Riverside USA
Brahim Hamid University of Toulouse France
Fu-Hau Hsu National Central University Taiwan
Martin Gilje Jaatun SINTEF ICT Norway
Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg Luxembourg
Herbert Kuchen University of Muenster Germany
Fei-Ching Kuo Swinburne University of Technology Australia
Luiz Augusto Fontes Laranjeira University of Brasília Brazil
Nadjib Lazaar Montpellier 2 University France
Ninghui Li Purdue University USA
Horst Lichter RWTH Aachen University Germany
Huai Liu RMIT University Australia
Lin Liu Tsinghua University China
Peng Liu Pennsylvania State University USA
Rui Maranhao University of Porto Portugal
Dusica Marijan Simula Research Laboratory Norway
Andrew Martin University of Oxford UK
Bruce McMillin Missouri University of Science and Technology USA
Mercedes G. Merayo Complutense University of Madrid Spain
Henry Muccini University of L’Aquila Italy
Sunil Nair Institute for Energy Technology Norway
Duy Cu Nguyen University of Luxembourg Luxembourg
Thomas Noll RWTH Aachen University Germany
Manuel Oriol ABB Corporate Research Center France
Ioannis Parissis Université Grenoble Alpes France
Gilles Perrouin University of Namur Belgium
Alexandre Petrenko Russian Academy of Sciences Russia
Mauro Pezzè University of Lugano Switzerland
Phu H. Phung University of Gothenburg Sweden
Reinhold Plösch Johannes Kepler University Austria
Alexander Pretschner Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Germany
Giovanni Russello University of Auckland New Zealand
Sahra Sedigh Sarvestani Missouri University of Science and Technology USA
Sagar Sen Simula Research Laboratory Norway
Sean Smith Dartmouth College USA
Angelos Stavrou George Mason University USA
Jing Sun University of Auckland New Zealand
Li Tan Washington State University USA
Chii-Ren Tsai Citigroup Inc. USA
Tugkan Tuglular Izmir Institute of Technology Turkey
Wen-Guey Tzeng National Chiao Tung University Taiwan
Miroslav Velev Aries Design Automation USA
Helene Waeselynck LAAS-CNRS France
Jun Wei Chinese Academy of Sciences China
Dinghao Wu Pennsylvania State University USA
Yu-Sung Wu National Chiao Tung University Taiwan
Min Xie City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
Chang Xu Nanjing University China
Dianxiang Xu Boise State University USA
Yuen Tak Yu City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
Tao Yue Simula Research Laboratory Norway
Fatiha Zaidi University of Paris-Sud XI France
Hongyu Zhang Microsoft Research Asia China
Lingming Zhang University of Texas at Dallas USA
Jianjun Zhao Shanghai Jiao Tong University China
Mohammad Zulkernine Queen’s University Canada


Information for authors of regular papers


Submit original papers (not published or submitted elsewhere) with a maximum of ten pages. Include the title of the paper, the name and affiliation of each author, a 150-word abstract, and up to 6 keywords. The format of your submission must follow the IEEE conference proceedings format.

  Click here to submit your paper.



Information for authors of fast abstracts


The objective of fast abstracts is to report on-going work, describe practical experiences, introduce new ideas to promote further validation, or state positions on controversial issues. Each fast abstract can have a maximum of two pages using the IEEE conference proceedings format.

 
Click here to submit your fast abstract.



Information for authors of student doctoral program


The objective of the student doctoral program is to encourage students to attend QRS and present their work, exchange ideas with researchers and practitioners, and get early feedback on their research efforts. Submit original papers (not published or submitted elsewhere) with a maximum of six pages using the IEEE conference proceedings format. Each submission should include the title of the paper, the name and affiliation of each author, a 150-word abstract, and up to 6 keywords. The first author must be a student (the advisor or non-student collaborators may be co-authors). Once accepted the paper should be presented by a student.

  Click here to submit your paper.



Information for authors of workshops


Submit original papers (not published or submitted elsewhere) with a maximum of ten pages. Include the title of the paper, the name and affiliation of each author, a 150-word abstract, and up to 6 keywords. The format of your submission must follow the IEEE conference proceedings format.

  Click on "Workshops" on the left pane to view all the co-located workshops.


Conference Proceedings


The conference proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services (CPS). Papers presented at the conference will also be submitted for inclusion into the IEEE Xplore and to all of the A&I (abstracting and indexing) partners (such as the EI Compendex).

Important Dates


    January 15, 2015    Workshop proposals due
    March 28, 2015 (Extended)
   Regular papers due
    May 1, 2015
   Fast Abstract Track due
    May 1, 2015 (Extended)
   Workshop & Student Doctoral Program due
    May 30, 2015 (Extended)
   Author notification
    June 20, 2015 (Extended)
   Camera-ready and author registration due
    August 3-5, 2015    Conference dates

Public Transportation


Railway Station
  • Ralston (4.00 KM/2.50 MI)
  • San Carlos (4.00 KM/2.50 MI)

Airport
  • San Francisco International (16.09 KM/10.00 MI) - Free shuttle available
  • San Jose International (40.23 KM/25.00 MI)
  • Oakland International (48.28 KM/30.00 MI)

Heliport/Airfields
  • San Carlos (3.20 KM/2.00 MI)

Highway Exit
  • Holly Street (3.00 KM/1.88 MI)
  • Ralston Avenue (3.00 KM/1.88 MI)


Shuttle Service


  • Pick-up/drop-off from San Francisco International Airport only.
  • Call Hotel at (650) 598-9000 to request airport shuttle pick-up after collecting your luggage from the baggage claim.
  • Hours of operations are 6:00AM to 11:00PM daily.
  • Approximate 30-35 minutes for pick-up/drop-off depending on traffic.

How to get to the Shuttle Area

  • From the baggage claim area, go up to the departure level.
  • Cross the street to the center island where you will see "Hotel Courtesy Shuttle Only".

Designated Pick-Up Points

  • Terminal 1: All Domestic Airlines (Airtran, US Airways, Delta, Frontier, Alaska)
    Exit through US Airways
  • International Terminal: All International Airlines (Jet Blue, KLM, China, Air Canada, British Airways, Swiss Airways, Lufthansa, etc.)
    Exit through Air France
  • Terminal 2: Virgin American, American Airlines
  • Terminal 3: Continental/United
    Exit through United Gate # 8

 


Arriving by Vehicle


From the South

Take highway 101 north. Exit from Holly Street, then follow signs for Redwood Shores Parkway. At the second traffic light turn left onto Twin Dolphin Drive. The hotel is half a mile down on the right hand side.

From the North

Take highway 1011 south. Exit from Ralston, then follow signs for Marine Parkway. At the third traffic light, turn right onto Twin Dolphin Drive. The hotel is half a mile down on the left hand side.


 


General Inquiries


For more detailed and updated information, please contact Professor W. Eric Wong, co-Chair, Steering Committee at [email protected].


Previous SERE/SSIRI/SIRI


  SERE 2014 - San Francisco, California, USA
  SERE 2013 - Washington, D.C., USA
  SERE 2012 - Washington, D.C., USA
  SSIRI 2011 - Jeju Island, Korea
  SSIRI 2010 - Singapore
  SSIRI 2009 - Shanghai, China
  SSIRI 2008 - Yokohama, Japan
  SIRI 2006 - Hanoi, Vietnam


Previous QSIC/APAQS


  QSIC 2014 - Dallas, Texas, USA
  QSIC 2013 - Nanjing, China
  QSIC 2012 - Xi'an, China
  QSIC 2011 - Madrid, Spain
  QSIC 2010 - Zhangjiajie, China
  QSIC 2009 - Jeju, Korea
  QSIC 2008 - Oxford, UK
  QSIC 2007 - Portland, Oregon, USA
  QSIC 2006 - Beijing, China
  QSIC 2005 - Melbourne, Australia
  QSIC 2004 - Braunschweig, Germany
  QSIC 2003 - Dallas, Texas, USA
  APAQS 2001 - Hong Kong
  APAQS 2000 - Hong Kong

Best Paper Award


At least one award will be presented by QRS 2015. Authors will receive a plaque signed by the President of the IEEE Reliability Society and also a cash prize (depending on the conference budget).

Special Section of IEEE Transactions on Reliability


Authors of selected papers from QRS 2015 will be invited to submit an extended version to a special section of IEEE Transactions on Reliability (T-Rel). However, such an invitation does not imply acceptance of the paper. All the submissions will be evaluated following the guidelines set by T-Rel. Only those which satisfy all the criteria will be accepted for publication.

Registration (The deadline for author registration is June 20, 2015)


  Please read all the details on this page before click here to start your registration.


  Registration Fee

Early Registration
(Until June 20)
Late Registration
(June 21-August 2)
On-Site
 
IEEE Member USD 650 USD 750 USD 850
IEEE non-Member USD 750 USD 850 USD 950
IEEE Student Member USD 400 USD 450 USD 500
Non-IEEE Student Member USD 450 USD 500 USD 550



  Registration Policy

  • The registration fee must be paid in full with a credit card when registering for the conference.

  • Every paper (including those in the Student Doctoral Program, Workshops, and Fast Abstract Track) must have at least one paid non-student registration, (i.e., the student registration is not sufficient) in order to be included in the conference proceedings or the QRS 2015 companion.

  • Authors with multiple papers must pay one non-student registration for each paper.

  • Each registration covers all the technical sessions at the main conference and workshops, as well as meals and social events such as lunches, coffee breaks, banquet, etc.

  • Student registration only applies to full-time students. Proper IDs must be presented at the conference. It cannot be used to satisfy the registration requirement for the paper to be included in the proceedings or companion.


  Refund Policy

  • Cancellation by July 20th, 2015: Full refund less a $50 USD administrative fee.

  • Cancellation after July 20th, 2015: No refund. However, you may substitute another person for your registration at any time. Contact Professor Eric Wong in the event you want to make a substitution.


  Paper Presentation

  • Every paper must be presented by one of the authors at the conference in order to be included in the IEEE digital library and indexed by the EI Compendex. This requirement cannot be satisfied by a guest presenter who is not a co-author of the paper, nor by a video presentation without an in-person appearance; such papers will not be eligible for the digital library or the indexing service. Contact Program Chair Professor Jian Zhang with sufficient justification in the event of extraordinary circumstances that would make attendance impossible.




   The group discount rooms at Vancouver Airport Marriott Hotel are sold out.
   We have made a different arrangement for QRS attendees to stay at the
   Hilton Hotel, which is right next to the conference venue. The room rate is also
   CAD 159.00 plus tax available from August 1 to August 6.

   Click HERE to make your reservation.


QRS 2015 Meeting Venue & Hotel


Vancouver Airport Marriott Hotel

7571 Westminster Highway, Richmond, BC V6X 1A3, Canada
Phone:  (604) 276-2112
Fax:       (604) 276-0112

 

  • Click HERE for hotel reservation.

  • A limited number of rooms are available from August 1 to August 7 with a group discount rate of CAD 159.00 plus tax. Please make your reservation as soon as possible.

All participants staying at the hotel must use the above customized link to reserve a room. This will identify you as a QRS 2015 attendee. The hotel requires a credit card number to secure the room and to cover incidental expenses.

Shuttle & Transportation


The hotel shuttle runs 24 hours per day, every 30 minutes from the hour (Ex. 1:00pm, 1:30pm, 2:00pm) and picks up from outside the front lobby entrance of the hotel. Drops off at the “hotel courtesy shuttle pick up and drop off area” at the International and Domestic terminals at the Vancouver International Airport on the departures level.

Please note from 1:30am - 4:00am the shuttle service is based on request only. If guests are flying in and will be arriving this late, please have them contact the hotel directly at 604-276-2112 or via the hotel shuttle board in either terminal

QRS 2015 co-Located Workshops


All the workshops will be held concurrently with the main conference.

  SSCPS: IEEE International Workshop on Safety and Security in
      Cyber-Physical Systems
      Organizer:
      Yixiang Chen (East China Normal University, China)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to SSCPS 2015

  IA: IEEE International Workshop on Information Assurance
      Organizer:
      Shih-Kun Huang (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to IA 2015

  TC: IEEE International Workshop on Trustworthy Computing
      Organizers:
      Fu-Hau Hsu (National Central University, Taiwan)
      Yu-Sung Wu (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to TC 2015

  MVV: IEEE International Workshop on Model-Based Verification & Validation
      Organizers:
      Tugkan Tuglular (Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey)
      Fevzi Belli (Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to MVV 2015.

  HSASQ: IEEE International Workshop on Human and Social Aspect of Software
      Quality
      Organizers:
      Ziyuan Wang (Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to HSASQ 2015.

  HSCD: IEEE International Workshop on Hardware-Software Co-Design
      Organizer:
      Donghui Guo (Xiamen University, China)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to HSCD 2015


  QUAMES: IEEE International Workshop on Quality and Measurement of
      Software Model-Driven Development
      Organizer:
      Beatriz Marin (Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to QUAMES 2015


  SEKM: IEEE International Workshop on Software Engineering and Knowledge
      Management
      Organizers:
      Tieju Ma (East China University of Science and Technology, China)
      Kazuhiro Ogata (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
      Jing Tian (Wuhan University of Technology, China)
      Jianwen Xiang (Wuhan University of Technology, China)
     
      Click here to submit your papers to SEKM 2015


Final Camera-ready Submission


Please follow the instructions in the author kit you received from Bob Warner at the IEEE CPS (Conference Publishing Services) to upload your camera-ready version directly to the specific IEEE web server. Do not submit it via EasyChair, which was only for the initial submission.

  Number of Pages

    Regular Paper: 10
    Student Paper: 6
    Fast Abstract: 2
    Workshop: 10

     No extra pages are allowed.


  The submission deadline is April 30, 2012.
   
    If you have more than one paper accepted, you need to create one profile for each
    submission.

    After the submission, you also need to submit the copyright release to the IEEE.
   

QRS 2015: Keynote Speakers




Stephen S. Yau
Information Assurance Center, and School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering,
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, USA

Human Factors in Development of Trustworthy Service-based Systems


Abstract

Over the past decade, the rapid advances and growth in deployment of service-based systems, such as the booming cloud computing systems, have had major impacts on the economy, society, and our daily lives. Today, users have grown more accustomed to accessing various online services from a wide range of computing devices, from smart phones/tablets to desktop PCs, for both business and entertainments. However, such a trend also means that more users' private and confidential information than ever is transferred processed and stored in service-based systems. This trend raises serious concerns on the trustworthiness of such systems. Substantial research has been devoted to developing new security mechanisms, network protocols, and methods to improve the trustworthiness of service-based systems. Human factors, however, have not been sufficiently addressed in the development of trustworthy service-based systems.


Human factors encompass many aspects in the development of trustworthy service-based systems, from design of trust management for trustworthy service-based systems and analysis of tradeoff between system usability and security to the evaluation of users' confidence and the usability of the deployed systems. Human factors are more important in the development of trustworthy service-based systems than traditional software systems due to more complicated interactions among various participants (infrastructure providers, service providers, application developers, and users) of service-based systems.


In this address, the current state of the art of human factors considered in the development of trustworthy service-based systems will be discussed, especially on how human factors are incorporated in improving system trustworthiness, such as the establishment and evaluation of trusts. Challenges and future research directions for human factors in the development of trustworthy service-based systems will be presented.


Biography

Stephen S, Yau is the director of Information Assurance Center and a professor of computer science and engineering at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, Arizona, USA. He served as the chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at ASU in 1994-2001. Previously, he was on the faculties of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and University of Florida, Gainesville.


He served as the president of the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and was on the IEEE Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors of Computing Research Association. He served as the editor-in-chief of IEEE COMPUTER. He organized many national and international major conferences, including the 1989 World Computer Congress sponsored by International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and the Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC) sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. His current research includes service-based systems, cloud computing, trustworthy computing, software engineering, mobile ad hoc networks and ubiquitous computing. He has received many awards and recognitions for his accomplishments, including the Tsutomu Kanai Award and Richard E. Merwin Award of the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Centennial Award and Third Millennium Medal, the Outstanding Contributions Award of the Chinese Computer Federation, and the Louis E. Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana, and the B.S. degree from National Taiwan University, Taipei, all in electrical engineering.




Virgil Gligor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Towards a Theory of Trust in Networks of Humans and Computers


Abstract

We argue that a general theory of trust in networks of humans and computers must be build on both a theory of behavioral trust and a theory of computational trust. This argument is motivated by increased participation of people in social networking, crowdsourcing, human computation, and socio-economic protocols, e.g., protocols modeled by trust and gift-exchange games, norms-establishing contracts, and scams/deception. User participation in these protocols relies primarily on trust, since online verification of protocol compliance is often impractical; e.g., verification can lead to undecidable problems, co-NP complete test procedures, and user inconvenience. Trust is captured by participant preferences (i.e., risk and betrayal aversion) and beliefs in the trustworthiness of other protocol participants. Both preferences and beliefs can be enhanced whenever protocol non-compliance leads to punishment of untrustworthy participants; i.e., it seems natural that betrayal aversion can be decreased and belief in trustworthiness increased by properly defined punishment. We argue that a general theory of trust should focus on the establishment of new trust relations where none were possible before. This focus would help create new economic opportunities by increasing the pool of usable services, removing cooperation barriers among users, and at the very least, taking advantage of "network effects." Hence a new theory of trust would also help focus security research in areas that promote trust-enhancement infrastructures in human and computer networks. Finally, we argue that a general theory of trust should mirror, to the largest possible extent, human expectations and mental models of trust without relying on false metaphors and analogies with the physical world.


This talk is based on joint work with Jeannette Wing.


Biography

Virgil D. Gligor received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the University of Maryland between 1976 and 2007, and is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and co-Director of CyLab. Over the past thirty-five years, his research interests ranged from access control mechanisms, penetration analysis, and denial-of-service protection to cryptographic protocols and applied cryptography. Gligor was an editorial board member of several IEEE and ACM journals, and the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing. He received the 2006 National Information Systems Security Award jointly given by NIST and NSA in the US, and the 2011 Outstanding Innovation Award given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control.




Huimin Lin
State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Checking Safety Properties of Concurrent Programs


Abstract

As network and multi-core systems are becoming pervasive, software systems also go concurrent. In a concurrent setting, in order to accomplish its computation task a program must cooperate with other programs by exchanging messages between them. These result in non-determinism and sophisticated interaction behaviour, making it very difficult to ensure that concurrent software systems will run safely and reliably


In this talk I will present an approach to checking safety properties of concurrent programs. In this approach, concurrent programs are represented as symbolic transition graphs which can be regarded as a generalization of flow chart diagrams to allow nondeterminism and communication. Safety properties are expressed as formulas in alteration-free first-order mu-calculus. An efficient algorithm exists to check whether a symbolic transition graph satisfies the desired properties. Various abstraction techniques can be incorporated to reduce the size of reachable state space.


Biography

Huimin Lin received Ph.D in Computer Science from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1986. He is currently a research professor and the director of the State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999.


Prof. Lin's research interests include concurrency, model checking, modal logics, formal methods, and tools and algorithms for concurrent systems. He is in the editorial boards of Information and Computation, Theoretical Computer Science, as well as major computer science journals in China (Science in China, Journal of Computer, Journal of Software, Journal of Computer Science and Technology etc.). He serves in the Steering Committees of the International Conference on Quality Software and the Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, and has been general chairs or program committee chairs of several international conferences in the area of computer science and software.



QRS 2015: Additional Invited Speakers




Karama Kanoun
Directeur de Recherche
LAAS-CNRS
Toulouse, France

Software Dependability Assessment: A Reality or A Dream


Abstract

The widespread use of software systems and their ever increasing size and complexity induce many challenges to software developers and quality assurance practitioners. A fully integrated approach, based on qualitative and quantitative aspects, is needed to ensure that software dependability is correctly handled and the expected goals are reached for the final product. Dependability assessment, based on measurement, plays a vital role in software dependability improvement.


Measurement encompasses both the observation of the software behavior during its development or operational life (i.e., field measurement) and controlled experimentation (i.e., experimental measurement). Field measurement requires the collection of data related to failures, maintenance, and usage environment, in order to evaluate measures such the overall software failure rate, the failure rates according to some specific (critical) failure modes, the components failure rates, and system availability. Controlled experimentation complements very well field measurement, particularly when considering Off-The-Shelf software for which, most of the time, no information is available from the development phase.


The presentation will focus on dependability assessment, based on measurements. It will i) outline current approaches to measurement-based dependability assessment, with examples from real-life systems, and ii) identify some research gaps.


Biography

Karama Kanoun is Directeur de Recherche at LAAS-CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research - Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems), in charge of the Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance Research Group (http://www.laas.fr/~kanoun/). Her research interests include modeling and evaluation of computer system dependability considering hardware as well as software, and dependability benchmarking. She has co-directed the production of a book on Dependability Benchmarking (Wiley and IEEE Computer Society, 2008).


Karama Kanoun is Chairperson of the Special Interest Group on Dependability Benchmarking of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and vice-chairperson of the IFIP working group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance. She was the principal investigator of the DBench European project (Dependability Benchmarking), and managed the European Network of Excellence ReSIST, Resilience Survivability in IST.


She is chairing the Steering Committee of the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) and serving on the Steering Committees of three other conferences in her field of interest: DSN (the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks), ISSRE (the IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering), and QRS (the IEEE International Conference on Software Security and Reliability). She has been a consultant for several French companies (including Renault-Automation, SYSECA, Aerospatiale, SAGEM, CNES, Alcatel Espace, STNA), the European Space Agency, Ansaldo Transporti, and the International Union of Telecommunications.




Phillip Laplante
IEEE Fellow &
Professor of Software Engineering

Penn State University

Safe and Secure Software Systems and the Role Professional Licensure


Abstract

Licensure of certain software engineers in the United States will be required in at least 10 states by 2013 and, likely, by all US states and jurisdictions within a few years. States license engineers to ensure that those who offer services directly to the public are minimally competent. But what kinds of software systems affect the health, safety and welfare of the public? Which software engineers will need to be licensed? The answers to these two questions are both a matter of law and of science. This paper introduces some of the scientific aspects of these two questions from the perspective of reliability engineering and suggests new research directions to help answer these questions.


Biography

Dr. Phillip Laplante is Professor of Software Engineering at Penn State's Great Valley Graduate Professional Center. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Laplante spent several years as a software engineer and project manager working on avionics, computer aided design and software test systems. He has authored or edited 27 books and has published more than 200 scholarly papers. He is currently chairing the committee that is developing the examination, which will be used nation-wide to license Professional Engineers in the practice of Software Engineering.


Laplante received his B.S., M.Eng., and Ph.D. in Systems Planning & Management, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, respectively, from Stevens Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and SPIE and a member of numerous other professional societies, program committees, and boards. He is a licensed professional engineer in Pennsylvania and a Certified Software Development Professional.




Ji Wang
National Laboratory for Parallel and Distributed Processing,
School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology,
Changsha, China

Formal Modeling, Verification and Refinement of Long Running Transactions


Abstract

Recently, long running transactions attracted much research attention, because they are adopted in distributed systems, such as service-oriented systems, to ensure consistency. How to model and verify long running transactions is critical to improve the reliability of current distributed systems.


This talk will introduce our recent work on formal modeling, verification and refinement of long running transactions in terms of a process algebra language. The start point of our work is Compensating CSP (cCSP), which extends CSP for specification and verification of long running transactions. We present an extended cCSP to support the modeling of non-determinism, deadlock and livelock, which are the three basic features of concurrent systems. A full semantic theory supporting refinement for the extended language is developed based on the theory of CSP. Leveraged by our semantic theory, the verification techniques and the tools, such as FDR and PAT, can be extended for verifying long running transactions.


This talk is based on joint work with Zhenbang Chen and Zhiming Liu.


Biography

Ji Wang received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from National University of Defense Technology. He is currently a professor in School of Computer of National University of Defense Technology, and the deputy director of National Laboratory for Parallel and Distributed Processing of China. He has been awarded National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China, and Professorship of Chang Jiang Scholars Program of Ministry of Education of China. His research interest includes formal analysis and verification of software systems, and distributed parallel computing. He has been an editorial board member of the Journal of Systems and Software, the Science China (Information Sciences), and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Software Security and Reliability.


Tutorial


The QRS Tutorial is sponsored by the IEEE Future Direction Committee.
Click here for PowerPoint slides and videos of previous tutorials.


Each attendee will receive a certificate signed by the President of the IEEE Reliability Society.


The registration fee is USD $150 per person, including a copy of the course materials, lunch and morning/afternoon coffee breaks on the tutorial day. Please send an email to Yihao Li for payment information.


Presenters:

  Professor Karthik Pattabiraman (The University of British Columbia)
    Modern Web Applications’ Reliability Engineering
    (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)  [more...]

  Dr. Baljeet Malhotra (SAP Canada Inc.)
    Good Governance of Open Source Software and Services at Enterprises:
    Some Key Principles

    (Wednesday, August 5, 2015)  [more...]


QRS 2015 Keynote & Panel Slides


Keynote
Speech I
Lionel Briand
Scalable Software Testing and Verification Through Heuristic Search and Optimization: Experiences and Lessons Learned
Slide
Keynote
Speech II
Elisa Bertino
Data Protection from Insider Threats Concepts and Research Issues
Slide
Keynote
Speech III
Jifeng He
A Hybrid Relational Modeling Language
Slide
Keynote
Speech IV
Shaoying Liu
Integrating Specification Animation with Specification-Based Program Testing and Inspection for Software Quality Assurance
Slide
Keynote
Speech V
Tsong Yueh Chen
Metamorphic Testing: A Simple Method for Testing Non-Testable Programs
Slide
Plenary
Panel
Security of IoT (Internet of Things)
Steve Yau
Jeff Voas
Elisa Bertino
Tim Grance

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Slide-3
Slide-4

Photos Taken at QRS 2015