Two ICS Professors Among Five UC Irvine Researchers Named AAAS Fellows
UC Irvine has announced five faculty members were named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — an association focused on advancing science and serving society. AAAS Fellows are “a distinguished cadre of scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching, and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.”
Among the five new honorees at UC Irvine are two researchers from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS): Nalini Venkatasubramanian of the Department of Computer Science and Thomas Zimmermann of the Department of Informatics. Congratulations to these two esteemed researchers for achieving this lifetime honor.
Nalini Venkatasubramanian: Supporting Resilient Communities
Computer Science Professor Nalini Venkatasubramanian was recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of distributed computing, particularly developing the foundations of adaptive middleware for distributed systems and its realization through IoT-enabled systems for smart, resilient communities.
“It is rewarding to be recognized for this work, which is rooted in addressing societally important problems such as emergency response, assisted living technologies, smart-water infrastructure and public safety,” says Venkatasubramanian.
Her research focuses on enabling effective management and utilization of resources in the evolving global information infrastructure. In particular, she designs and develops large-scale distributed computing platforms that can handle multiple requirements such as reliability, timeliness, quality of service and sustainability.
“Reliability and timeliness are critical to maintaining public safety,” says Venkatasubramanian, whose work spans everything from smart firefighting applications to AI-enabled smart water infrastructure and smart buildings that prioritize data privacy. “Realizing the global smart communities vision requires taking an interdisciplinary approach centered around people and societal impact.”
Thomas Zimmermann: Pioneering Software Analytics
Chancellor’s Professor and Donald Bren Chair Thomas Zimmermann was recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of software engineering, particularly in mining software repositories, defect prediction, and developer productivity and experience through innovative empirical research.
“Much of my research focuses on software analytics with the goal of uncovering actionable information about how software is created,” says Zimmermann. His landmark paper on automated data mining of version archives helped pioneer the Mining Software Repositories (MSR) field. The algorithms he has developed to extract, link and analyze data across software repositories are at the core of many MSR and software engineering innovations.
He is also known for his work on software defect prediction, which helps developers identify parts of a system expected to have the most software bugs, and for his work on developer productivity and experience, which includes coauthoring the popular SPACE framework. He has recently focused on the ways in which AI is revolutionizing software development, exploring how AI capabilities are integrated into software and how AI affects the work of software developers. “In 10 years, AI will write software we can’t even imagine today.”
Zimmermann was thrilled to learn he had been named an AAAS Fellow. “I am deeply honored,” he says. “This recognition is also a testament to my incredible colleagues, mentors and collaborators who have inspired and supported me throughout my career. Advancing knowledge in software engineering is a collective effort, and I am grateful to be part of a community that is dedicated to innovation, rigor and impact.”
— Shani Murray