Doris L. Carver

Department of Computer Science

Louisiana State University

Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA

Our reliance on computer-based systems continues to increase at a rapid rate. These systems, which range from information systems to embedded systems, represent a crucial component of today's work and leisure environments. An increasing number of these systems are mission-critical systems. The software engineer of the future must be prepared to develop and evolve the large, complex systems that will be required of them. Meeting these challenges depends on 1) research advances in the field of software engineering, and 2) our ability to provide software engineers with the educational background needed to meet the ever-changing demands. In this context, we will discuss current trends and directions in software engineering research. We will also discuss software engineering as a profession, including an overview of a proposed body of knowledge for software engineering and a code of ethics for software engineers. We will include software engineering education trends at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion of some specific opportunities and difficulties that face us as we prepare the software engineer of the future.

Search engines for information retrieval analyze surface features of archived documents. The inherent limitations of the technology, together with the variation in what users will consider to be relevant to their individual needs and the restricted forms available for the expression of that need, make it impossible to determine with certainty which documents to return to the user. The task then becomes the ordering of documents such that those most likely to be useful are ranked most highly. But, what is meant by "most likely", and how is this "likelihood" to be determined? In this talk we will discuss the use of Maximum Entropy Modeling as an approach to dealing with probabilistic uncertainty in general, and with uncertainty in information retrieval, in particular.

Doris L. Carver is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Louisiana State University. She also serves as the Associate Commissioner for Sponsored Programs Research and Development at the Louisiana Board of Regents. She is the Director of the Software Engineering Laboratory at Louisiana State University. She conducts research in the areas of software development environments, specification techniques, reverse engineering, and object-oriented software development.

Carver received a BS in mathematics from Carson-Newman College, an MS in mathematics from the University of Tennessee, and a PhD in computer science from Texas A&M University. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association, Board of Directors of the IEEE, IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitors Program, and the steering committee for the IEEE Computer Society/ACM Computing Curricula 2001. She is an IEEE Fellow.