One Ph.D. research assistantship is available starting Fall 2008 for research in concurrent program testing and verification. The project is funded by the US National Science Foundation.

Project title: Trace-Driven Verification of Multithreaded Software.

Project Summary:
The ever increasing use of hyper-threading and the availability of inexpensive multiprocessor hardware present tremendous opportunities as well as serious challenges for software developers. In order for software applications to benefit from the continued exponential throughput advances in multi-core processors, the applications must be well-written multithreaded software programs. Unfortunately, writing multithreaded software programs that can unleash the full potential of present and future hardware systems remains as challenging today as it was thirty years ago. This research aims to develop practical tools and methodologies that can bring down the complexity of testing/debugging multithreaded programs to a level comparable to that of testing/debugging sequential programs.

Requirement:
The candidate will have a BS degree in Computer Science (MS preferred).
Excellent programming skill is required. Knowledge on formal verification, model checking, and SAT/SMT solvers is preferred.

Western Michigan University is one of the 50 largest universities in the U.S. with over 26,000 students and 1,200 faculty members. The university is located in Kalamazoo, the largest city in the southwest region of Michigan with a total population of 77,145.

The assistantship covers tuition and stipend. Enquires about the position and application procedure should be addressed to:

Dr Zijiang (James) Yang,
Department of Computer Science
Western Michigan University
zijiang.yang@wmich.edu