Professor Dietmar Pfahl’s inaugural lecture on challenges faced by software engineers

On 20 February, UT Professor of Software Engineering Dietmar Pfahl delivers his inaugural lecture “Data-driven Decision Support in Software Engineering and Management” in the university assembly hall.

Software has become part of our daily life: whether we drive a car, sit on a plane, use our washing machine, perform a bank transaction, or file our tax return, software is involved in all of these activities. Software engineers must make many decisions in their daily work. The quality of their decision-making is crucial for the success of every new software system deployed to the market. Unlike other engineers, software engineers cannot rely on the laws of nature but must base their decisions to a large extent on experience and empirically derived models.

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Pfahl will discuss how software engineers can support their decision-making by using empirical research methods as well as data mining and machine learning techniques. The lecture will end with a vision of an integrated framework for data-driven decision support in software engineering.

Dietmar Pfahl earned his master’s degree (1986) and PhD (2001) in Germany, at the Universities of Ulm and Kaiserslautern, respectively. Before joining the University of Tartu as an Associate Professor in 2013, he worked eight years in industry (Siemens AG, Germany), and held appointments with the University of Calgary, Canada, the Lund University, Sweden, and the University of Oslo, Norway. He also worked for the German Aerospace Research Establishment near Munich, Germany, and the Simula Research Laboratory near Oslo, Norway. He was the founder and director of Pika Research, Inc., Claresholm, Canada, from 2009 to 2015. Since 2008, he is Adjunct Professor with the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada. In spring 2017, he was appointed Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Tartu.

Dietmar Pfahl’s research interests focus on data-driven decision support in software engineering and management. Previously, he published articles on software process simulation and improvement, software release planning, and software testing. He has more than 100 publications in top-ranked software engineering journals and conference proceedings. He is also a senior member of the IEEE and the ACM.

Dietmar Pfahl delivers his inaugual lecture in English on 20 February at 16:15 in the University of Tartu assembly hall. All interested are welcome to the lecture or to watch the webcast on UTTV.

 

Additional information: Dietmar Pfahl, UT Professor of Software Engineering, +47 404 48 055, dietmar.pfahl@ut.ee