Education

• 1992: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.
  • Dissertation: "Understanding and Using Program Complexity to Improve Software Development."
  • Advisory committee: Marvin V. Zelkowitz (Chair), Victor R. Basili, Ben Shneiderman, Adam A. Porter, A. Yavuz Oruc.

• 1986: M.S. in Engineering Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Specialty: Decision and Control (decision making/analysis in engineering/economic systems).

• 1982: B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
  • Specialty: Automatic Control (circuits/electronics, system modeling/optimization).

Academic and Working Experience

2001 - : Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Engineering Management, Information & Systems, SMU.

1995 - 2001: Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, SMU.

• Conducting research in software engineering and computer science, particularly in the following areas:
  • Software testing techniques, tools, management, and improvement.
  • Software reliability and safety
  • Measurement and analysis of software products and processes
  • Web-based and other user-oriented (user-centered) applications: web mining, usage and problem characterization, reliability and quality assurance and improvement.
  • Other general software engineering research, including software processes, statistical analysis of software engineering data, risk identification and management, prototyping.
  • Software and systems in commercial, telecommunication, embedded, open-source, and web-based applications: testing, system characterization, performance evaluation, and reliability analysis.

  Most of the above research activities are conducted in collaboration with IBM (IBM SWS Toronto Laboratory and Centre for Advanced Studies), Nortel Networks, Lockheed-Martin, and other industrial partners. Project sponsors include National Science Foundation , THECB/ATP, and the above industrial partners.

• Teaching software engineering and computer science courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, including the following:
  • CSE 8340: Advanced Topics in Software Engineering: Empirical Software Engineering.
  • CSE 8317: Software Reliability and Safety.
  • CSE 8391: Special Topics on Software Reliability and Safety.
  • CSE 6340: Advanced Software Engineering.
  • CSE 5343/7343: Operating Systems and System Software.
  • CSE 5314/7314: Software Testing and Quality Assurance.
  • CSE 1341: Principles of Computer Science I.
  • CSE 1317: C Programming.

• Ph.D. thesis completed under my supervision:
  • Zhao Li, "Web Reliability Analysis and Improvement", Feb., 2008.
  • Li Ma, "Web Error Classification and Usage Based Model for Web Reliability Improvement", May, 2007.
  • A. Gunes Koru, "Risk Identification for Defect Reduction in Software Development", Aug., 2004.
  • Swu Yih, "Hazard Analysis and Prevention Techniques for Safety-Critical Computing Systems" Aug., 1996.

• Served on the advisory committee of the following Ph.D. or D.E. students:
  • Praveen Chaturvedi "Single Phase Multicomponent Flow Simulation in Porus Media" April, 2008.
  • Youqian Zhang, "Development, Analysis and Numerical Methods for Multicomponent, Multiphase Flow in Porous Media", June, 2007.
  • Juan Peng Rajani, "Transport of Multicomponents in a Fluid and Numerical Solutions", June, 2007.
  • Nikhil Kikkeri, "Formal Verification of Digital Systems Featuring Custom Performance and Cost Optimization", April, 2007.
  • Yu Meng, "Extensible Markov Model: An Efficient Data Mining Framework for Spatiotemporal Stream Data", April, 2007.
  • Rabie A. Ramadan, "On the Development of Mobile Heterogeneous Sensors in Critical Infrastructure", April, 2007.
  • Jahanzeb Faizan, "Introducing Reliability and Load Balancing in Mobile IPV6 Based Networks", Dec., 2005.
  • Zhongxiao Wang, "Parallel Computation for Reservoir Thermal Simulation: An Overlapping Domain Decomposition Approach", July, 2005.
  • A. Yasemin Seydim, "Location Dependent Query Processing in Mobile Environments", April, 2003.
  • Ryan M. Garlick, "Dynamic Wavelength Routing and Microbatch Provisioning in WDM Networks", April, 2003.
  • Ahmad Saad H. Al-Mogren, "Developing an Architectural Model and Maintaining Transactional Consistency for Universal Mobile Broadcast Environment", July, 2002.
  • Vasile Rus, "Logic Forms for Wordnet Glosses", May, 2002.
  • Rada F. Mihalcea, "Turning Implicit Knowledge into Explicit Knowledge via Word Semantics: A Model for Information Retrieval", Nov., 2001.
  • Alexandru Marius Pasca, "High-Performance, Open-Domain Question Answering from Large Text Collections", Sep., 2001.
  • Cheng Shan, "Guaranteed Quality of Service for VBR Traffic", May, 2001.
  • William D. Bell, "Quality and Productivity Comparisons of Object-Oriented and Cleanroom Software Developments", Feb., 2001.
  • Yongqiao Xiao, "Online Adaptive Data Mining for Large Databases", Nov., 2000.
  • Yu Wang, "Mobility and Quality of Service Support in Packet-Switched Mobile Data Networks", July, 2000.
  • Krishnan G. Indiradevi, "Design and Validation of Authentication Protocols", July, 2000.
  • George Deprez, "Distributed Fault Management Framework for Multi-Layered Networks", April, 2000.
  • Qun Ren, "Semantic Caching in Mobile Computing", Feb., 2000.
  • Guang Wan, "Network Delivery of Packet-based Multi-Services in Wireless Communications Networks", Sept., 1999.
  • Hakki Candan Cankaya, "Survivability Analysis of Restorable SONET Networks", Mar., 1999.
  • Israel Hilerio, "Herbal-T: A Distributed Architecture for Internet Component Integration", Jan., 1999.
  • Jenq-Foung Yao, "Caching Management of Mobile DBMS on a Mobile Unit", Aug., 1998.
  • Krishnakumar B. Pillai, "Software Development Effort and Cost Estimation", April, 1998.
  • Jun-Lin Lin, "On Low-Cost Checkpointing Approaches for Main Memory Databases and Distributed Databases," July, 1997.
  • Stephen F. Mills, "A Resource-Focused Framework for Process Engineering," April, 1997.
  • Julie Liu, "Query Processing in Nonmonotonic Reasoning," April 1997.
  • Mario Nascimento, "Efficient Indexing of Temporal Databases via B+Trees," Aug., 1996.
  • Elif Demirors, "A Blackboard Framework for Supporting Teams in Software Development," Dec. 1995.

• Served on the M.S. thesis committee for the following students:
  • Jason Mizher, "Scalability of the OAT Algorithm", May, 2002.
  • Mahesh V. Deshpande, "Detecting Design Violations in the Use of Design Patterns", Sept., 1998.

1992 - 1995: Process & Quality Analyst, IBM Software Solutions Toronto Laboratory.

• Lab champion for software reliability engineering (SRE): Piloted, adapted, developed, and deployed SRE in many projects to track testing progress, monitor reliability growth, improve the reliability of delivered software products, and manage projects.
  • Integrated time and input domain models for reliability assessment & improvement.
  • Educated testers/developers/managers for deployment and technology transfer.
  • Developed integrated software tools using SMERFS, S-PLUS, C and AWK utilities.
  • Gathered customer usage information via instrumented code and surveys.
  • Analyzed product reliability to help resource allocation and release decisions.

• Lab champion for measurement and measurement-based process improvement: Collected and analyzed data covering market research and planning, product development, maintenance, support, and customer feedback, focusing on software estimation, defect analysis, process diagnosis, quality projection and improvement.
  • Collected quality, size, complexity, environment, and change data for analysis.
  • Constructed predictive models for key products to guide project management.
  • Implemented process changes with development teams on a real-time basis.
  • Modeled customer feedbacks to guide market selection and delivery.
  • Improved project data repository, and built tools to support data analyses.

• Participated in IBM-university research programs, including software reliability, testing, and process modeling. Developed and deployed a process for maintaining technical vitality of the Lab staff.

1986-1992: Research/Teaching Assistant, Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Maryland.

• Research focus: Developed a formal model of program complexity, a classification scheme, and evaluation criteria. Applied the technique to 16 NASA/SEL projects using CTA, an analysis tool in Ada I participated in building. Reduced 74 candidate measures to 18 valid ones that resulted in improvements in both accuracy and consistency in predicting high cost modules over the original process.

• Other research: Developed and validated a program complexity measure and a data comprehension model based on prime program theory, coding theory and cognitive science. Formalized the use of prototypes in software risk management, and developed criteria for carrying out prototyping.

Publications

• A complete list of my publications, including 27 in refereed journals and 7 in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, on software engineering and related research is available online (at http://www.engr.smu.edu/~tian/home/pubs.html).

• Abstracts of selected recent papers are also available online.

Sponsored Research Projects (totaling over $900,000 since 1996):

• External sponsors include:
  • National Science Foundation (NSF),
  • Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB),
  • IBM,
  • Nortel Networks.

• J. Tian, H. El-Rewini, and S. Nair, IUCRC Planning Proposal: SMU Research Site Proposal to Join Embedded Systems IUCRC. National Science Foundation (award# IIP-0733937), $10,000, 9/1/2007 -- 8/31/2008.

• J. Tian, An Integrated Strategy for Testing User-Oriented Software Systems. National Science Foundation (award# CCR-0204345), $150,000, 9/1/2002 -- 8/31/2004.

• J. Tian, Ensuring and Maximizing Reliability and Safety for Embedded Software Systems", Texas THECB/ATP, (award#003613-0030-2001) $115,540, 1/1/2002 -- 12/31/2003.

• J. Tian, Telecommunication Software Testing and Quality Assurance, Texas THECB/ATP, (award#003613-0030-1999) $95,672, 1/1/2000 -- 12/31/2001.

• J. Tian, Telecommunication Software Testing and Quality Assurance, Nortel Networks, (industrial match to the Texas THECB/ATP award above), $50,000, 1/1/2000 -- 12/31/2001.

• J. Tian, CAREER: Techniques and Tools for Early Measurement and Improvement of Software Reliability. National Science Foundation (award# CCR-9733588), $329,895 (initial award $205,001 + matching supplements), 6/1/1998 -- 5/31/2002.

• J. Tian, Defect Reduction and User-Oriented Testing for Telecommunication Systems, Nortel Networks, (industrial match and extension to the NSF/CAREER award above), $50,000, 6/1/1998 -- 5/31/2000.

• J. Tian, Matching fund for industrial collaboration with Nortel Network, and THECB/ATP award above, as supplement to the CAREER award/project above, National Science Foundation: $25,000 per year, 6/1/1998 -- 5/31/2002, totaling $100,000.

• M.H. Dunham, R. Barr, E. Lin, and J. Tian, MRI: A Laboratory for Telecommunications Management Network Research, National Science Foundation, (award# 9724517), $150,000, Sept. 1997 -- Aug. 2000.

• J. Tian, Reliability and testing for large commercial software systems, IBM SWS Toronto Lab, Faculty Research Fellowship, Summer, 1996.
  (Cash value of about $20,000, including expense/infrastructure/compensation/staff support.)

• J. Tian, Tools for reliability analysis, SMU Office of Research and Graduate Studies, $2844.14, May, 1996.

• J. Tian, Integrated reliability analysis and improvement, SMU University Research Council, $4000, Feb., 1996.

Major Awards and Recognitions:

• Recognized as one of the 15 "Top Scholars in the Field of Systems and Software Engineering" by the Journal of Systems and Software (JSS) in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006, and 2008, based on publications in six leading journals. The details can be found in the following annual reports:
  • W.E. Wong, T.H. Tse, R.L. Glass, V.R. Basili, and T.Y. Chen, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2001-2005)", JSS 81(6):1059-1062, June, 2008.
  • T.H. Tse, T.Y.Chen, and R.L. Glass, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2000-2004)", JSS 79(6):816-819, June, 2006.
  • R. Glass, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (1995-1999)", JSS 54(1):77-82, Sep., 2000.
  • R. Glass, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (1994-1998)", JSS 49(1):81-86, Dec., 1999.
  • R. Glass, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (1993-1997)", JSS 43(1):59-64, Oct., 1998.
  • R. Glass, "An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (1993-1996)", JSS 39(1):83-88, Oct., 1997.

• National Engineers Week 2002 Asian American Engineer of the Year.

• The paper "Usage Measurement for Statistical Web Testing and Reliability Analysis", with C. Kallepalli, 7th International Software Metrics Symposium, London, England, April, 2001, was selected as one of the six best papers from the conference and subsequently published by the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

• One of the 100 invited participants in the "6th Annual Symp. on Frontiers of Engineering", Irvine, California, Sept. 14-16, 2000, organized by the National Academy of Engineering.

• Best tutorial award for "Tree-based Reliability Models (TBRMs) for Early Measurement and Improvement of Software Reliability" at the 5th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies (Ada-Europe 2000), Potsdam (Berlin), Germany, June, 2000.

• The SMU Chapter of Sigma Xi "Outstanding Research Award", April, 2000.

• NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award ( NSF's Highest Honor For New Faculty ), 1998.

• Best paper award, IEEE 8th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE'97) for the paper "An Operational Profile for the Cartridge Support Software" with Ken Chruscielski. Nov., 1997.

• The paper "Prescriptive Specification Checking for Hazard Prevention in Computer controlled Safety-Critical Systems", with S. Yih, 3rd International Conference on Reliability, Quality and Safety of Software-Intensive Systems (ENCRESS'97), Athens, Greece, May, 1997, was selected as one of the six best papers from the conference and subsequently published by the Microprocessors & Microsystems Journal.

• IBM's "Author Recognition Program (ARP)" awards: level I award in Oct., 1993; level II in Aug., 1994; and levels III and IV in July, 1995.

• Best paper award, CASCON'93 sponsored by IBM Canada Ltd. and National Research Council of Canada, for the paper "Collecting Data for Reliability Analysis and Modeling" co-authored with J. Palma and P. Lu. Oct., 1993.

Professional Activities:

• Panelist for NSF grant/program reviews since 1998.

• Reviewer for many conferences and the following journals:
  • IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering (TSE),
  • IEEE Trans. on Reliability (T-Rel),
  • IEEE Computer,
  • Communications of the ACM (CACM),
  • Journal of Systems and Software (JSS),
  • Empirical Software Engineering Journal (EMSE),
  • Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability (STVR),
  • Journal of Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS),
  • The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems,
  • Annals of Software Engineering (ASE),
  • The Computer Journal,
  • International Journal of Computer Mathematics,
  • Journal of Information Science and Engineering,
  • The CSI Journal of Computer Science and Engineering.

• Program committee member for the following international conferences:
  • 8th International Conf on Quality Software (QSIC 2008), Oxford, UK, Aug. 12-13, 2008.
  • 20th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE'2008), San Francisco, CA, July 1-3, 2008.
  • 17th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE2008), Los Angeles, CA, June 30 -- July 2, 2008.
  • 7th International Conf on Quality Software (QSIC 2007), Portland, Oregon, Oct. 11-12, 2007.
  • Workshop on Testing, Analysis and Verification of Web Services and Applications (TAV-WEB) 2006, as part of ACM International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA'06), Portland, Maine, July 17-20, 2006.
  • 6th International Conference on Web Engineering, Stanford, California, 2006.
  • 5th International Conference on Web Engineering, Sydney, Australia, 2005.
  • International Workshop on Web Measurement and Metrics Tokyo, Japan, 2005.
  • IEEE 1st International Workshop on Web Based Systems and Applications (WEBSA'03), Dallas, Texas, 2003.
  • International Conf. of the Chilean Computer Society, 1996.

• Fast Abstract co-chair, 10th IEEE High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, Dallas, TX, Nov. 14-16, 2007.

• Session Chair, "Software Process", at the 6th International Conference on Reliability Software Technology (Ada-Europe 2001), Leuven, Belgium, May 14-18, 2001.

• Tutorial co-chair, First IEEE Workshop on Application Specific Software Engineering and Technology (ASSET'98).

• Co-chair, CASCON'94 Workshop on Issues in Software Testing and Reliability, Nov., 1994 (sponsored by IBM Canada Ltd. and National Research Council of Canada).

• Member of IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Reliability Society, ACM, ACM SIGSOFT, and ASQ Software Division.

• Certified Professional Engineer (PE, Texas PE#93319) since 2004, and served on the Electrical Engineering Committee of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) since 2007.