*VSE Seminar: Engineering Autonomic Software Systems: A Learning-Based 
Approach*
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*Sam Malek*
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, GMU

Monday, November 5
9:30 - 10:30 AM
Research Hall, Room 163

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*Abstract:*

An autonomic software system is capable of adjusting its behavior at 
runtime in response to changes in the system, its requirements, or the 
environment in which it executes. Autonomic capabilities are 
sought-after to automate the management of software in many computing 
domains, including service-oriented, mobile, cyber-physical and 
ubiquitous settings. While the benefits of such software are plenty, the 
development of it has shown to be much more challenging than the 
traditional software.

In this talk, I will first provide an introduction to this area of 
research, followed by an overview of my contributions. Afterwards, I 
will delve into the details of a particular engineering framework 
developed in my research group, called FeatUre-oriented Self-adaptatION 
(FUSION). It brings about two innovations: (1) a feature-oriented 
approach for representing the adaptation choices that are deemed 
practical by the engineers, and (2) an online learning-based approach 
for automatically acquiring the knowledge to troubleshoot and manage a 
software system. I will present an empirical evaluation of FUSION in the 
context of a case study. Results demonstrate FUSION's ability to 
accurately learn the changing dynamics of the system, while achieving 
efficient analysis and adaptation. I will conclude the talk with an 
outline of my future research agenda.


*Bio:*
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Sam Malek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer 
Science at George Mason University. He is also a faculty member of the 
C4I Center. Malek's general research interests are in the field of 
software engineering, and to date his focus has spanned the areas of 
software architecture, autonomic software, and software dependability. 
Malek received his PhD and MS degrees in Computer Science from the 
University of Southern California, and his BS degree in Information and 
Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. His research 
at Mason has been supported by NSF, DARPA, IARPA, ARO, FBI, AGC, and 
SAIC. He is a member of the ACM, ACM SIGSOFT, and IEEE.

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