[Ph.D. Position: Highly Interactive Object-Oriented Software Systems]
Rainer Blome
rainer@physik3.gwdg.de
Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:42:05 +0200
Hi folks,
the theme of this announcement shows some overlap with Tunes'
interface subproject. Maybe someone is interested ...
Keep on rocking, Rainer
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Return-Path: <stadt@cs.utwente.nl>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:15:35 +0200
From: stadt@cs.utwente.nl (Richard van de Stadt)
To: rainer@physik3.gwdg.de
Subject: Ph.D. Position: Highly Interactive Object-Oriented Software Systems
Content-Length: 8947
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Please forward this announcement or the URL containing the same
text - http://wwwtrese.cs.utwente.nl/Docs/phd/index.html,
to any qualified candidates you know who may be interested in
applying to work in this project.
Thank you for your help,
Richard van de Stadt
TRESE project
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Twente
The Netherlands
================================================================
We are currently searching for a Ph.D. candidate (F/M)
in the area of
HIGHLY INTERACTIVE OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE SYSTEMS
INTRODUCTION
During the last decade, interfaces to software systems have
evolved from low-level command interfaces to highly interac-
tive multimedia environments. Research activities on mul-
timedia environments cover many disciplines such as human
psychology, software engineering, media processing, operat-
ing systems, computer hardware, databases, communication
protocols, media understanding, and entertainment. In this
project, we focus on the software engineering aspects of
designing interactive software systems. In particular, we
will focus on object-oriented frameworks, methods and
models.
One of the major problems of interactive systems of today is
that most systems provide only a static interaction pattern
with no opportunity for user interaction other than moving
from window to window. These interfaces can be termed as
"brochureware" because basically what they provide is an
"electronic brochure" of the system. For example, in world-
wide-web applications, it is widespread practice to
translate standard brochures into Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) and putting them on the web.
Systems with static interaction patterns have a number of
drawbacks. Usability of these systems is limited to the
ability of users to browse and activate system actions. We
consider "the power to listen" as a crucial feature of an
interactive system to improve usability and make it attrac-
tive to its users. To be able to listen, interactive systems
must be equipped with the following capabilities. Firstly,
interactive systems must be able to "hear" what users have
to say. Secondly, systems must "understand" the users'
needs. Thirdly, systems must "respond" to users to satisfy
their needs. Finally, systems must learn about the interac-
tions that they have had with the users. We will term these
applications as "live applications".
Designing live applications requires the following tech-
niques:
1) Since live applications are likely to be continuously
changing, they require adaptable and dynamic language
models for realization. We think that reflective and
composable object-oriented models are suitable for this
purpose. In addition, interactive applications require
languages that are capable of expressing active and
real-time objects with constraint enforcement features.
2) Live applications are not restricted to information
retrieval only. They can be a part of any complex sys-
tem, from electronic banking to computer integrated
manufacturing. Therefore, design methods for live
applications must be integrated with general purpose
design methods. We think that current object-oriented
methods have to be extended for this purpose.
3) To listen, understand and respond, live applications
must be equipped with natural language processing tech-
niques. This requires extensions to methods and
language models.
4) The developed language and method has to be integrated
with (de-facto) standard multimedia environments.
DESCRIPTION OF THE WORK
This research project is a joint activity between the TRESE
and Parlevink projects, and aims at defining object-oriented
models and methods for building highly-interactive software
systems. For this purpose, the following sub-goals are iden-
tified:
1) Defining a composable, concurrent and real-time object-
oriented language with constraint enforcement facili-
ties for the construction of live applications. This
work will extend the composition-filters approach,
wherever necessary.
2) Defining object-oriented methods to develop live appli-
cations. For this purpose, we plan the carry out the
following activities:
(a) Defining object-oriented software artifacts (or
agents). Each artifact represents a design concept
of a live application;
(b) Enhancing software artifacts through fuzzy-logic
based design rules and design processes;
(c) Making artifacts programmable to represent partic-
ular design information;
(d) Defining algorithms to match users' wishes and the
design goals of the artifacts;
(e) Interfacing the software artifacts with the
scripting language of a hypermedia system;
(f) Integrating the language and method within a mul-
timedia environment.
CANDIDATE DESCRIPTION
First, the Ph.D. candidate must have a very good understand-
ing of the basic object-oriented concepts, methods, patterns
and frameworks. In addition, the candidate is expected to
have some practical experience in object-oriented software
development. Second, knowledge on object-oriented reflection
and concurrent processing techniques are preferred. Third,
the candidate must have some knowledge about modern software
engineering environments, artifacts and process programming.
Fourth, knowledge about language understanding techniques is
highly appreciated. Finally, the candidate must display a
high degree of eagerness and creativity necessary to produce
an excellent Ph.D. work.
EMPLOYMENT
The candidate will be employed by the University of Twente
as a Ph.D. associate based on standard regulations. The
expected time span for the Ph.D. work is four years.
APPLICATION
If you are interested in this position, please send your
letter including your C.V. not later than October 15, 1996,
with a list of courses/grades you have taken, to
Ms. Charlotte Bijron, E-mail: bijron@cs.utwente.nl, Depart-
ment of Computer Science, University of Twente, P.O. Box
217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands. E-mail applications
are welcome.
To obtain more information, you can contact Mehmet Aksit:
(aksit@cs.utwente.nl)
or, Anton Nijholt:
(anijholt@cs.utwente.nl).
OUR RELATED BACKGROUND (http://wwwseti.cs.utwente.nl)
The TRESE Project
Since 1987, the TRESE project has been involved in the
development of a large number of pilot applications to form
its own view on object-oriented methods. Although our
experiences confirmed the claims about the benefits of
object-oriented methods, we identified a number of important
obstacles that are not addressed by the current methods
[Aksit&Bergmans, OOPSLA'92]. To address the identified
problems, we have introduced a new concept, called the com-
position filters based object-oriented model. The
composition- filters model aims at improving the expression
power of the object- oriented model through modular and
orthogonal extensions. Our major research contributions can
be summarized as improved object- oriented modeling [Aksit &
Tripathi, OOPSLA'88], reusable transactions [Aksit et al.
IEEE Software March 91], reusable concurrency and synchroni-
zation [Bergmans & Aksit, JPDC, September 96], language-
database integration [Aksit et al., ECOOP'92], abstracting
coordinated behavior [Aksit et al., LNCS791, 93], reusable
real-time systems [Aksit et al., ECOOP'94, Bergmans & Aksit,
JPDC September 96], fuzzy-logic based object-oriented
software development techniques [Aksit & Marcelloni, Metrics
Workshop, ECOOP'95].
The PARLEVINK Project
Within the Parlevink project a number of research activities
have been carried out in designing natural language inter-
faces for software systems and in designing algorithms for
several kinds of applications using neural networks, fuzzy
logic and genetic algorithms.
The Schisma subproject aims at designing a natural language
accessible theatre information and booking system [G.F. v.d.
Hoeven et al., in Proceedings of the First Workshop on
Applications of Natural Language to Data Bases, 95] [Ander-
nach et al., in Language Engineering'95, AI'95, 15th Inter-
national Conference, 95]. The project is a vehicle for
research on (multi-modal) dialogue modelling and management
in human- computer interaction. Use is made of computational
models from theoretical computer science, including machine
learning, for prediction and recognition of sequences
(words, categories, utterances, speech acts, dialogue turns
etc.).
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