Dr. Charles Knutson, Department of Computer Science
Summary
In 2008 I was awarded a MEG entitled “An Undergraduate Mentoring Environment for Empirical Software Engineering Research.” In the several years that followed that award I was able to provide financial support to six undergraduate students. The results have been incredibly successful and gratifying. Of those students who received support from that MEG award, three continued research as graduate students in the SEQuOIA Lab— two are currently PhD candidates and the third is completing an MS degree. The other three students completed BS degrees and are currently employed as software engineers at Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. These six mentored undergraduate students all published during their time in the lab, two of them while undergraduates. In all, these six students have participated in 17 refereed publications, most of them as primary authors. One of these mentored students, now a PhD candidate has been instrumental in the organization of an academic workshop on software engineering replication, a critical emerging area of research.
As a by-product of the research conducted by these students, the BYU SEQuOIA Lab has emerged at the forefront of a growing field of empirical software engineering research. The Lab was recently voted membership in the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN), a prestigious body that includes most of the world’s leading researchers in empirical software engineering. I can confidently say that the work of these students was instrumental in laying the foundation for membership in ISERN. We have emerged as international leaders in the field of replication, as well as artifact-based empirical research in open source systems.
MEG funds were used almost exclusively to provide wages to mentored undergraduate researchers. Approximately $3,000 was spent for student travel to conferences, and another approximately $600 was spent for books and training materials for mentored undergraduate students. All other funds were for direct student support.
Students
The following students were recipients of MEG funding since 2008.
Jonathan Krein, PhD candidate
Jonathan has been very productive, participating in 12 publications (5 as primary author) since he first began as a mentored undergraduate. He is a co-proposer and co-organizer of the International Workshop on Replication on Software Engineering Research (RESER) (now entering its third year). He completed an internship at IBM Research in 2010. Jonathan now mentors younger lab members in becoming effective researchers.
Alexander MacLean, PhD candidate
Alex has been very productive, participating in 11 publications (4 as primary author) since he first began as a mentored undergraduate. He is currently helping to propose and organize the first International Workshop on Open Source Taxonomy, to be co-located with the International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS). He will also assist with local arrangements for OSS when it is hosted in Utah by the BYU SEQuOIA Lab in 2013.
Landon Pratt, MS candidate
Landon has participated in 5 publications (1 as primary author) since he first began as a mentored undergraduate. He recently presented his research at OSS 2011 in Salvador, Brazil. Landon will defend his MS thesis in 2012.
Quinn Taylor, MS candidate, Software Engineer, Apple Computer
Quinn has participated in 3 publications (all 3 as primary author) since he first began as a mentored undergraduate. Quinn is currently employed at Apple in Cupertino, California and is preparing to defend his MS thesis.
James Stevenson, BS Computer Science, Software Engineer, Amazon
James participated in one publication while he was in the lab (none as primary author). He is currently employed at Amazon in Seattle, Washington. James began a MS program but failed to finish his degree before taking the job with Amazon.
Jason Casebolt, BS Computer Science, Software Engineer, Microsoft
Jason participated in one publication (as primary author) while he was in the lab. He is currently employed at Microsoft in Washington and continues to express a desire to return to school for a graduate degree in Computer Science.
Publications
The following is a list of the publications in which these mentored undergraduate students participated:
Alexander C. MacLean, Landon J. Pratt, and Charles D. Knutson. “Knowledge Homogeneity and Specialization in the Apache HTTP Server Project.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2011), Salvador, Brazil, October 6-7, 2011.
Alexander C. MacLean and Charles D. Knutson. “Open Source: From Mythos to Meaning.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2011) Doctoral Consortium, Salvador, Brazil, October 6-7, 2011.
Landon J. Pratt, Alexander C. MacLean, and Charles D. Knutson. “Cliff Walls: An Analysis of Monolithic Commits Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2011), Salvador, Brazil, October 6-7, 2011.
Quinn C. Taylor, Jonathan L. Krein, Alexander C. MacLean, and Charles D. Knutson. “An Analysis of Author Contribution Patterns in Eclipse Foundation Project Source Code.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2011), Salvador, Brazil, October 6-7, 2011.
Scott H. Burton, Paul M. Bodily, Richard G. Morris, Charles D. Knutson, and Jonathan L. Krein. “Design Team Perception of Development Team Composition: Implications for Conway’s Law.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER 2011), Banff, Alberta, Canada, September 21, 2011.
Jonathan L. Krein, Landon J. Pratt, Alan B. Swenson, Alexander C. MacLean, Charles D. Knutson, and Dennis L. Eggett. “Design Patterns in Software Maintenance: An Experiment Replication at Brigham Young University.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER 2011), Banff, Alberta, Canada, September 21, 2011.
Jonathan L. Krein, Patrick Wagstrom, Stanley M. Sutton Jr., Clay Williams, and Charles D. Knutson. “The Problem of Private Information in Large Software Organizations.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP 2011), Honolulu, Hawaii, May 22, 2011.
Quinn Taylor, Christophe Giraud-Carrier and Charles D. Knutson. “Applications of Data Mining in Software Engineering.” International Journal of Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies (IJDATS), vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 243-257, July 2010.
Alexander C. MacLean, Landon J. Pratt, Jonathan L. Krein and Charles D. Knutson. “Trends That Affect Temporal Analysis Using SourceForge Data.” Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Public Data about Software Development (WoPDaSD ’10), Notre Dame, Indiana, June 2, 2010.
Jonathan L. Krein, Alexander C. MacLean, Daniel P. Delorey, Charles D. Knutson and Dennis L. Eggett. “Impact of Programming Language Fragmentation on Developer Productivity: A SourceForge Empirical Study.” International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes (IJOSSP), vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 41-61, June 2010.
Charles D. Knutson, Jonathan L. Krein, Lutz Prechelt and Natalia Juristo. “1st International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER).” Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE ’10), Cape Town, South Africa, May 4, 2010.
Jonathan L. Krein and Charles D. Knutson. “A Case for Replication: Synthesizing Research Methodologies in Software Engineering.” Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER ’10), Capetown, South Africa, May 4, 2010.
Alexander C. MacLean, Landon J. Pratt, Jonathan L. Krein and Charles D. Knutson. “Threats to Validity in Analysis of Language Fragmentation on SourceForge Data.” Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER ’10), Capetown, South Africa, May 4, 2010.
Jonathan L. Krein, Alexander C. MacLean, Daniel P. Delorey, Charles D. Knutson, and Dennis L. Eggett. “Language Entropy: A Metric for Characterization of Author Programming Language Distribution.” Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Public Data about Software Development (WoPDaSD 2009), Skovde, Sweden, June 6, 2009.
Jason Casebolt, Jonathan L. Krein, Alexander C. MacLean, Daniel P. Delorey, Charles D. Knutson. Challenge Paper: “Author Entropy vs. File Size in the GNOME Suite of Applications.” Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 09), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, May 23, 2009.
Charles D. Knutson and Jonathan Krein. “The 20-Minute Genealogist: A Context- Preservation Metaphor for Assisted Family History Research.” Proceedings of the 9th Annual Workshop on Technology for Family History and Genealogical Research, Provo, Utah, March 12, 2009.
Quinn Taylor, James Stevenson, Daniel P. Delorey, and Charles D. Knutson. “Author Entropy: A Metric for Characterization of Software Authorship Patterns.” Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Public Data about Software Development (WoPDaSD 2008), Milan, Italy, September 10, 2008.