Linda Northrop has more than 35 years of experience in software development as a practitioner, researcher, manager, consultant, and educator. She currently is director of the Product Line Systems Program at the SEI where she leads the work in software architecture, software product lines, predictable construction, and ultra-large-scale systems.  Under her leadership, the SEI has developed software architecture and product line methods that are used worldwide, a series of five highly acclaimed books, and software architecture and software product line curricula.  She recently led a year long study including leaders in the software community to define technical and social challenges to the creation of ultra-large-scale systems that will evolve in the next generation.  The group published the study report, Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future (ISBN 0-9786956-0-7).

Before joining the SEI, she was associated with both the United States Air Force Academy and the State University of New York as professor of computer science, and with both Eastman Kodak and IBM as a software engineer.  As a private consultant, Linda also worked for an assortment of companies covering a wide range of software systems.  She is a recipient of the Carnegie Science Award of Excellence for Information Technology, the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award.

Linda is a frequently invited speaker and has given keynotes most recently at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ISCE), the Object-Oriented Programming, Languages, Systems, and Applications Conference (OOPSLA), the International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET), the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWC), the Aspect-Oriented System Development Conference (AOSD), the Siemens Software Conference, the Boeing Software Conference, the Brazilian Software Engineering Conference, and the Intuit Conference.  She is coauthor of the book Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns.  

She chaired both the first and second international Software Product Line Conferences (SPLC1 and SPLC2). She is a past chair of the OOPSLA Steering Committee, was OOPSLA 2001 Conference Chair, and from 1993-2000 was a Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB) commissioner. She is currently a member of the AOSD Steering Committee, the Editorial Board of Journal of Aspect-Oriented Software Development, the Advisory Board for the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (Lero), the Clemson University Computer Science Industrial Advisory Board, the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society.  

The Impact of Scale

Many systems of the future will be of ultra-large size on one or many dimensions – number of lines of code; number of people employing the system for different purposes; amount of data stored, accessed, manipulated, and refined; number of connections and interdependencies among software components; number of hardware elements to which they interface. They will be ultra-large-scale (ULS) systems. Is the software community ready to tackle ULS systems? Will incremental changes in our current software development and management practices be sufficient?

In fact, the characteristics of ULS systems, already evident in some of today’s largest systems, imply changes in the fundamental assumptions that underlie today’s software engineering approaches. The gaps are strategic, not tactical. Issues that are not significant at smaller scales become significant at ultra-large scales. Our current practices and more fundamentally the way we define our discipline are unlikely to scale to the size and levels of complexity of ULS systems. A new multi-disciplinary perspective and breakthrough research are needed. We must begin to take a more expansive view of software research and include its interactions with associated research in the physical and social sciences.

This talk is based on the results of a year-long study on ULS systems, documented in Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future (ISBN 0-9786956-0-7).

In March 2004, Dr. Killion was designated as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology/Chief Scientist. He is responsible for the entirety of the Army’s Research and Technology program, spanning 21 Laboratories and Research, Development and Engineering Centers, with approximately 8,600 scientists and engineers and a six year budget of $11.3 billion. He is responsible for developing a Science and Technology (S&T) strategy responsive to Army needs from the near-term (within the next five years) stretching out through the far-term (twenty years into the future). The Basic Research, Applied Research and Advanced Technology Development programs and budgets that Dr. Killion builds for this strategy must be defended within the Army, to the DoD and to Congress. He is also the principal scientific advisor to both the Secretary of the Army and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT)).

Prior to his designation, Dr. Killion served as the Director for Technology under the Deputy ASA for Research and Technology (DAS(R&T)). In this position, he was responsible for oversight and coordination for the majority of the Army’s Applied Research (6.2) program and all of its Advanced Development (6.3) program. He also co-chaired the Warfighter Technical Council and managed the Science and Technology Objective (STO) and Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) approval process for the DAS(R&T).

Prior to this assignment, Dr. Killion served as the Director for Personnel Technologies in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, where he was responsible for policy, guidance, oversight and advocacy of the Army’s MANpower and PeRsonnel INTegration (MANPRINT) and Soldier Oriented Research and Development in Personnel and Training (SORD-PT) programs. Dr. Killion also served as the principal scientific advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1.

Previously, Dr. Killion served as the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Liaison to the Office of the DAS(R&T), where he assisted in shaping, advocating and defending Army Science and Technology (S&T) program investments and priorities to senior leaders in the Army and in DoD and to Congress. During this time, he also served as the Acting Deputy Director for Research for a year, with responsibility for oversight of the Army’s Basic Research (6.1) program and substantial portions of the Applied Research (6.2) program. He also served as the manager for the Army’s Dual Use S&T program.

Other key assignments in Dr. Killion’s career include Technical Advisor in the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, ARL Liaison to the MANPRINT Directorate, Executive Assistant to the Director of ARL, Technology Team Leader for the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Joint Project, and Principal Scientist for Electronic Combat Training at the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory. He has authored numerous technical papers, open literature publications, and presentations on a diverse array of topics, including electronic combat training, computer-based training, unmanned aerial vehicle technology, dual use technology, Army basic research, Army S&T strategy, and MANPRINT.

Dr. Killion was born in Wichita, Kansas and received dual B.A.’s in Psychology and English from Saint Mary’s College in Winona, MN, in 1974. He received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, in 1978. Dr. Killion also graduated with highest distinction from the Naval War College in May 1997.

John Bloomer was appointed vice president, chief information officer (CIO) of Virtua Health in 2005. Leading all technology operations, Bloomer applies his extensive experience and vision in leveraging technology across all clinical and non-clinical aspects of patient care, and is working toward the creation of the new digitally-enabled Virtua Voorhees Hospital, which is slated for groundbreaking in late 2007.

Prior to joining Virtua, Bloomer was the global chief technology officer (CTO) for British-based Novar Controls, acquired by Honeywell. He has held numerous senior operation and technology leadership positions at General Electric, including CIO for General Electric's Colonial Penn Insurance. There he directed the merger of operations into GE Capital. Earlier he was the CTO and chief executive officer of GE's Global Energy Services, which developed energy management products and provided services to deregulating utilities.

In the mid-1990s, Bloomer led GE-NBC's efforts in digital video delivery. As CTO of NBC Cable, his teams helped build the world's first IP-based digital video services for financial traders and brokers, helping to establish the MSNBC joint venture. He started his career with GE developing multidimensional signal processing algorithms and hardware for medical and military applications. As a staff scientist at GE's Global Research Center, his teams developed breakthrough low-power 3D digital ultrasonic imaging, low-dose fluoroscopy and medical imaging archival systems.

Bloomer is a patented, published speaker and educator in topics ranging from medical imaging to building automation and controls and is active in and a past officer of professional societies including HIMMS/CHIME and IEEE. Bloomer received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Clarkson University, master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida, and performs doctorate study in information theory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Richard P. Gabriel received a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981, and an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in 1998. He has been a researcher at Stanford University, company president and Chief Technical Officer at Lucid, Inc., vice president of Development at ParcPlace-Digitalk, a management consultant for several startups, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University.

He is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research, looking into the architecture, design, and implementation of extraordinarily large, self-sustaining systems as well as development techniques for building them. Until recently he was President of the Hillside Group, a nonprofit that nurtures the software patterns community by holding conferences, publishing books, and awarding scholarships. He is on Hillside's Board of Directors.

He helped design and implement a variety of dialects of Lisp. He is author of four books ("Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems," MIT Press; "Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community," Oxford University Press; "Writers' Workshops and the Work of Making Things," Addison-Wesley Press; and "Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy," Morgan Kaufmann), and a poetry chapbook ("Drive On," Hollyridge Press), with two books of poetry in preparation: "Leaf of my Puzzled Desire" and "Drive On." He has published more than 100 scientific, technical, and semi-popular papers, articles, and essays on computing. He has won several awards, including the AAAI/ACM Allen Newell Award.

He is the lead guitarist in a rock 'n' roll band and a poet.

Dr. John Goodenough leads the Performance Critical Systems initiative, which aims to develop and transition techniques for increasing a software engineer's ability to predict and control the performance and dependability properties of software systems. Until 2001, Goodenough was the Chief Technical Officer of the SEI; at that time, he decided to resume his focus on technical project work. He was named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1995. He is the former leader of the Rate Monotonic Analysis for Real-Time Systems Project. He was a Distinguished Reviewer for the Ada 95 language revision effort and served as head of the U.S. delegation to the ISO Working Group on Ada. He was the principal author of the document specifying the revision requirements for Ada 95 and served as chair of the group responsible for recommending interpretations of the Ada language.

Patricia Hoffman is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability at the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability leads the Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to modernize the electric grid through the development and implementation of national policy pertaining to electric grid reliability and the management of research, development, and demonstration activities for “next generation” electric grid infrastructure technologies. Hoffman is responsible for developing and implementing a long-term research strategy for modernizing and improving the resiliency of the electric grid. Hoffman directs research on visualization and controls, energy storage and power electronics, high temperature superconductivity and renewable/distributed systems integration. She also oversees the business management of the office including human resources, budget development, financial execution, and performance management. Before joining the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Hoffman was the Program Director for the Federal Energy Management Program which implements efficiency measures in the federal sector and the Program Manager for the Distributed Energy Program that developed advanced natural gas power generation and combined heat and power systems. She also managed the Advanced Turbine System program resulting in a high-efficiency industrial gas turbine product. Hoffman holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Ceramic Science and Engineering from Penn State University.

Mark Klein is Senior Member of the Technical Staff of the Software Engineering Institute and the Technical Lead of its Software Architecture Technology Initiative. His research has spanned various facets of software engineering, dependable real-time systems and numerical methods. Klein's most recent work focuses on the analysis of software architectures, architecture evolution, economics-driven architecting, architecture competence, architecture tradeoff analysis, attribute-driven architectural design, scheduling theory and applied mechanism design. Klein's work in real-time systems involved the development of rate monotonic analysis (RMA), the extension of the theoretical basis for RMA, and its application to realistic systems. Klein’s earliest work involved research in high-order finite element methods for solving fluid flow equations arising in oil reservoir simulation. He is co-author of many papers and the following two books: "A Practitioner's Handbook for Real-Time Analysis: Guide to Rate Monotonic Analysis for Real-Time Systems" and "Evaluating Software Architecture: Methods and Case Studies".

Daniel J. Paulish is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ, responsible for the Siemens Software Initiative in the Americas. He has over twenty years experience in software engineering management. He has been an international lecturer on software process improvement methods, project management, and measurement. He is a co-author of Software Metrics: A Practitioner’s Guide to Improved Product Development published by IEEE Press, the author of Architecture-Centric Software Project Management: A Practical Guide published by Addison Wesley, and a co-author of Global Software Development Handbook, Auerbach Publishing. He is formerly an industrial resident affiliate at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and he has done research on software measurement at Siemens Corporate Technology in Europe. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York.

Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Chair of the Computer Science and Engineering program at Vanderbilt University. He has published over 400 technical papers and books that cover a range of research topics, including patterns, optimization techniques, and empirical analyses of software frameworks and domain-specific modeling environments that facilitate the development of distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) middleware and applications running over high-speed networks and embedded system interconnects.

Dr. Schmidt also has served as a Deputy Office Director and a Program Manager at DARPA, where he led the national R&D effort on middleware for DRE systems. In addition to his academic research and government service, Dr. Schmidt has over fifteen years of experience leading the development of ACE, TAO, CIAO, and CoSMIC, which are widely used, open-source DRE middleware frameworks and model-driven tools that contain a rich set of components and domain-specific languages that implement patterns and product-line architectures for high-performance DRE systems.

Kevin Sullivan received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University in 1987 and the MS and PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington in 1994. His PhD advisor was David Notkin. He is now Associate Professor and Virginia Engineering Foundation (VEF) Endowed Faculty Fellow in computer science at the University of Virginia, where he has worked since 1994. Kevin's research interests are in software-intensive systems, in general, and in software engineering and languages. more specifically. He was a co-author of the SEI Report, Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future. He recently served as associate editor for the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering and the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering & Methodology. He is General Chair for AOSD 2009, and has recently served on the program and executive committees of conferences including the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) and ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL).

Kurt Wallnau is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Mr. Wallnau has been an active contributor to research in component-based software engineering for over 20 years. He currently leads a SEI Research Initiative called "Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components." Prior to this he led SEI research in the use of commercial off-the-shelf software components (COTS). Mr. Wallnau has published numerous papers and articles on component-based software, including the Addison-Wesley book "Building Systems from Commercial Components." Mr. Wallnau's current interests include the use theories of run-time behavior as non-standard semantics of component-based specification languages, and the use of economics and game theory (i.e., mechanism design) to manage scarce resources in large, dynamic, multi-use systems.