Andreas Zeller

Resume

Full Professor (C4) at Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany (since May 2003)

• My current and future work includes automated debugging, self-healing programs, software evolution, experimental program analysis, and exploit generation.

Associate Professor (C3) at Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany (2001 to 2003)

• Invented an effective and efficient method for isolating causes of program failures: Delta Debugging, applied on program states, isolates cause-effect chains from computer programs - "First, A happened, then B, and then C, which lead to the failure". The method is now publicly available via the AskIgor automated debugging services.

  Cause-effect chains can be extracted from programs as large and as obfuscated as the GNU C compiler. The impact of having automated debugging available for such programs cannot be estimated yet.

• Developed Memory Graphs as a means to capture memory state and to examine and visualize program state using well-known graph algorithms.

  So far, the main use of memory graphs is their use in isolating cause-effect chains, as above. Other applications include visual exploration and state invariants expressed as graph properties.

Assistant Professor (Wiss. Assistent C1) at University of Passau, Bavaria, Germany (1999 to 2001)

• Extended Delta Debugging to isolate general failure-inducing circumstances such as failure-inducing input, failure-inducing statements, or failure-inducing schedules. Got research and patent grants.

  Delta debugging can fully automate fault localization, the most difficult part of debugging. Its potential will keep me very busy in the years to come...

• Developed Praktomat, a Web-based system for organizing programming courses. Praktomat automatically checks and tests submitted programs and lets students review each other's solutions.

  Praktomat was an enormous success in the students' view: 57.7% agreed that testing raised the quality of their programs (another 28.8% agreed partially); 63.5% confirmed that reviewing raised the quality of their programs (another 19.2% partially). On a scale from 1 (outstanding) to 6 (poor), the overall course got an average rating of 1.96.

• Wrote a book on Programming Tools that demonstrates software engineering principles on selected programming tools.

  Students love this book: It not only discusses the practical usage, but also shows the software engineering concepts and techniques behind daily programming tools.

Assistant Professor (Wiss. Assistent C1) at Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany (1997 to 1999)

• Developed Delta Debugging, an automated technique to isolate the change that causes a specific software failure. Basically, delta debugging answers the question ``Yesterday, my program worked. Today, it does not. Why?''

  Delta debugging brings together my previous work on configuration management and debugging; this combination promises several exciting research themes. Contact me for any details.

• Conceptualized and taught courses in Design Patterns (seminar, 1997), Software Tools (lecture, 1997 and 1998), and Software Engineering (lecture, 1997/98, 1998/99, and 1999/2000).

  These lectures have been evaluated by the students. on a scale from 1 (outstanding) to 6 (poor), the average for Software Tools was 2.03; for Software Engineering, 2.26. Best categories were the presentation as well as the quality of the lecture notes.

Research Assistant (Wiss. Mitarbeiter) at Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany (1991 to 1997)

• Developed the version set model, unifying the variety of software versioning concepts in one single versioning model, using feature logic as formal foundation.

  This was the first work that provided a unified formal base for software versioning concepts. It was presented on the major software engineering conferences as well as in the ACM transactions on software engineering. The resulting Ph.D. thesis won the Ernst Denert Award for the best German software engineering thesis in 1997.

• Conceptualized, co-authored and maintained the GNU Data Display Debugger (DDD), a tool that visualizes the data structures of your program while it is executing.

  With more than 250,000 users, DDD is one of the most successful pieces of ``academic'' software ever written. All major information technology suppliers use DDD for software development; the list goes from Adobe and Compaq to Thomson and Xerox.

• Held courses in Introduction to Programming (first-grade lecture, 1996/1997); Configuration Management (two one-day tutorials, 1996); Introduction to C++ (four one-week tutorials, 1992-1995); Software Engineering (exercises, 1992-1995); Functional Programming (exercise, 1991).

  In the student's evaluation, Introduction to Programming got an average grade of 2.21; the best category was the presentation style.

Ph.D. in Computer Science (Dr.-Ing.) at Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany (1991 to 1997)

• Ph.D. thesis: Configuration Management with Version Sets - A Unified Software Versioning Model and its Applications. Graduated summa cum laude in April, 1997.
• Research and development in deductive software configuration management and visual debugging.

Computer Science Diploma (Dipl.-Inform.) at Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (1984 to 1991)

• Diploma thesis: VSE - a Visual Structure Editor. Grade: 1.2 (passed with distinction) in June, 1991.

• Fluent in German, French, and English. Passive knowledge of Italian and Spanish.

• A. Zeller, J. Krinke: Programmierwerkzeuge. dpunkt.verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, May 2000.

• A. Zeller, R. Hildebrandt: Simplifying and Isolating Failure-Inducing Input. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 28(2), February 2002, pp. 183-200. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Automated Debugging: Are We Close? IEEE Computer, November 2001, pp. 26-31. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Datenstrukturen visualisieren und animieren mit DDD. Informatik — Forschung und Entwicklung 16(2), June 2001, pp. 65-75. [PDF]
• A. Zeller, G. Snelting: Unified Versioning Through Feature Logic. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 6(4), October 1997, pp. 398-441. [PS]
• G. Snelting, B. Fischer, F.-J. Grosch, M. Kievernagel, A. Zeller: Die inferenzbasierte Softwareentwicklungsumgebung NORA. Informatik - Forschung und Entwicklung 9(3), August 1994, pp. 116-131. [PS]

• A. Zeller: Configuration Management with Version Sets - A Unified Software Versioning Model and its Applications. PhD thesis, TU Braunschweig, April 1997. Referees: Gregor Snelting, Braunschweig, and Walter F. Tichy, Karlsruhe. Winner of the Ernst Denert Software Engineering Award 1997. [PDF]

• T. Zimmermann, P. Weißgerber, S. Diehl, A. Zeller: Mining Version Histories to Guide Software Changes. Proc. 26th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Edinburgh, UK, May 2004. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Isolating Cause-Effect Chains from Computer Programs. Proc. ACM SIGSOFT 10th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-10), Charleston, South Carolina, November 2002. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award. [PDF]
• J.-D. Choi, A. Zeller: Isolating Failure-Inducing Thread Schedules. Proc. ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2002), Rome, Italy, July 2002. [PDF]
• R. Hildebrandt, A. Zeller: Simplifying Failure-Inducing Input. Proc. ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2000), Portland, Oregon, August 2000, pp. 135-145. Among ISSTA 2000 Best Papers. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Making students read and review code. Proc. 5th ACM SIGCSE/SIGCUE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2000), Helsinki, Finland, July 2000, pp. 89-92. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Yesterday, my program worked. Today, it does not. Why? Proc. Joint 7th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC) and 7th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-7), Toulouse, France, September 1999, Vol. 1687 of LNCS, pp. 253-267. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: A Unified Version Model for Configuration Management. Gail Kaiser (Ed.), Proc. 3rd ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-3), Washington, DC. Software Engineering Notes 20 (4), October 1995, pp. 151-160. [PS]
• A. Zeller, G. Snelting: Handling Version Sets through Feature Logic. W. Schäfer, P. Botella (Eds.), Proc. 5th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC), Sitges, Spain, September 1995. Vol. 989 of LNCS, pp. 191-204. Among ESEC '95 Best Papers. [PS]
• G. Snelting, A. Zeller: Inferenzbasierte Werkzeuge in NORA. Proc. Softwaretechnik '93, GI Softwaretechnik-Trends, August 1993, pp. 25-32. [PS]

• A. Zeller: Causes and Effects in Computer Programs. Invited paper, Proc. Fifth International Workshop on Automated Debugging (AADEBUG 2003), Ghent, Belgium, September 2003. [PDF]
• T. Zimmermann, S. Diehl, A. Zeller: How History Justifies System Architecture (or not). Proc. International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE 2003), Helsinki, Finland, September 2003. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Program Analysis: A Hierarchy. Proc. Workshop on Dynamic Analysis (WODA 2003), Portland, Oregon, May 2003. [PDF]
• J. Krinke, M. Störzer, A. Zeller: Web-basierte Programmierpraktika mit Praktomat. Proc. GI-Workshop Neue Medien in der Informatik-Lehre, Dortmund, September 2002.
• T. Zimmermann, A. Zeller: Visualizing Memory Graphs. Proc. of the Dagstuhl Seminar 01211 "Software Visualization", May 2001. Vol. 2269 of LNCS, pp.~191-204. [PDF]
• H. Cleve, A. Zeller: Finding Failure Causes through Automated Testing. Proc. of the Fourth International Workshop on Automated Debugging, Munich, Germany, August 2000. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Animating data structures in DDD. Proc. SIGCSE/SIGCUE Program Visualization Workshop, Joensuu, Finland, Juli 2000.
• A. Zeller: Datenstrukturen visualisieren und animieren mit DDD. Proc. GI-Workshop: Softwarevisualisierung (SV 2000), Schloß Dagstuhl, Germany, Mai 2000. [PDF]
• K. Frühauf, A. Zeller: Software Configuration Management: State of the Art, State of the Practice. Proc. 9th International Symposium on System Configuration Management (SCM-9), Toulouse, France, September 1999, Vol. 1675 of LNCS, pp. 217-227. [PDF]
• A. Zeller: Versioning System Models Through Description Logic. Proc. 8th International Symposium on System Configuration Management (SCM-8), Brussels, Belgium, July 1998. Vol. 1439 of LNCS, pp. 127-132.
• A. Zeller: Software Configuration with Feature Logic. Franz Baader, Hans-Jürgen Bürckert, Andreas Günter, Werner Nutt (Eds.), Proc. of the Workshop on Knowledge Representation and Configuration Problems, Dresden, Germany, September 1996. DFKI Document D-96-04, pp. 79-83.
• A. Zeller: Smooth operations with square operators - The version set model in ICE. Ian Sommerville (Ed.), Proc. 6th International Workshop on Software Configuration Management (SCM-6), Berlin, March 1996. Vol. 1167 of LNCS, pp. 8-30.

• A. Zeller: Visual Debugging. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 2002.
• A. Zeller: Visual Debugging with DDD. Dr. Dobb's Journal #322, pp. 21-28, March 2001.

• A. Zeller, G. Snelting: Einführung in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes, Passau, 2000 and Saarbrücken, 2001.
• G. Snelting, A. Zeller: Einführung in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes, Braunschweig, 1998.
• A. Zeller, J. Krinke: Software-Werkzeuge. Lecture Notes, Braunschweig, 1998.

• A. Zeller: Funktionell und verständlich programmieren - so lernen es die Passauer. Softwaretechnik-Trends 19(3), pp. 29-34, November 1999. [PDF]
• A. Zeller, D. Lütkehaus: DDD - A Free Graphical Front-End for UNIX Debuggers. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 31(1), January 1996. [PS]

• International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC 2005) - PC member.
• International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2004) - PC member.
• International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE 2004) - PC member.
• ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT Workshop on Program Analysis for Software Tools and Engineering (PASTE 2004) - PC chair (with Cormac Flanagan, University of California, Santa Cruz).
• ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2004) - PC member.
• MSR 2004: International Workshop on Mining Source Repositories - PC member.
• Tenth International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2004) - PC member.
• ACM/IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2004) - PC member.
• Joint meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2003) - PC member.
• ACM Symposium on Software Visualization - PC member.
• Eleventh International Workshop on Software Configuration Management (SCM-11) - PC member.
• Tenth International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (SIGSOFT/FSE 2002) - PC member.
• Tenth International Workshop on Software Configuration Management (SCM-10) - PC member.
• Evaluating Expert for the European Union IST programme (the successor of ESPRIT).
• Reviewer for various ACM journals and IEEE journals.
• Member of the ACM, GI, and IEEE Computer Society.

• US$ 27,500 of the Eclipse Innovation Award, December 2002.
• € 110,000 from the DFG for basic research, project SN 11/8-1 "Delta Debugging", February 2001.
• € 100,000 from the BayernPatent initiative for an international patent on an automated debugging method, February 2001.
• € 36,000 from the Virtual University Bavaria, Projekt "Java Online Lab" in cooperation with Würzburg University, February 2001.

• Eclipse Innovation Award for integrating Delta Debugging into the Eclipse development framework, December 2002.
• ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award for Isolating Cause-Effect Chains from Computer Programs, November 2002.
• Ernst Denert Software Engineering Award 1997 for an ``outstanding work in the area of software development methods, tools, and procedures''.