Seminar 2015-03-31; Mark Staples on Critical Rationalism and Engineering

How does engineering support assurances about the use of critical systems? Engineering often uses science, but is engineering "scientific"? What is engineering, and how should we create and develop engineering knowledge? Does any of that matter to software engineering or computer science? (And are they a kind of engineering or science anyway?) When thinking about such questions, it would be good to have a better idea about what engineering is. Philosophy of Science is a well-established field. However, until recently there has been little work on the Philosophy of Engineering. In this talk I provide an overview of two recent papers about the nature and growth of engineering knowledge. I first discuss definitions of engineering, and note three recurring elements: the use of theories to show that designed artefacts meet requirements. I discuss some misconceptions about engineering, and contrast engineering theories with scientific theories. I then describe an ontological framework I have proposed for engineering knowledge. This adapts Karl Popper's well-known philosophy of Critical Rationalism (falsification and all that) and his less well-known Three Worlds ontology. The framework provides a basis for a taxonomy of falsification in engineering (a.k.a. engineering failure), and a taxonomy of responses to falsification in the growth of engineering knowledge.

Seminar 2015-03-10

Jean-Baptiste Jeannin - CMU - gave a talk on Differential Temporal Dynamic Logic for Hybrid Systems and Airplane Collision Avoidance. In this talk, Jean-Baptiste Jeannin presents a new logic, the differential temporal dynamic logic dTL2, to express temporal properties about Cyber-Physical Systems. He then shows an application to airplane collision avoidance, with a verification of the next-generation Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACASX), currently being developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

CeBIT 2015
2015-03-05 Australia's leading technology & business expo is here in Sydney 5-7 May, 2015. 450 exhibitors from Australia and around the world – from startups to multinationals – showcase their innovations and technologies on the CeBIT Expo show floor. SSRG will be represented by Trustworthy Systems displaying the quadcopter and talking about HACMS/SMACCM.

2015-02-19 Techfest
NICTA’s Techfest showcase’s over 30 technology demonstrations, including highly secure operating systems for drones, vision processing systems for Australia’s bionic eye, map-based access to open spatial data, and unique 3D GPS tracking software featuring synchronised sound and video. The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, Federal Minister for Communications opened the event.

2015-02-09 Summer School

The 3rd Software Systems Summer School featured lectures by international leaders in computer systems from industry and academia, interspersed with short student talks. The emphasis was a friendly and informal setting where students learn and obtain feedback from experts. Sessions included Distributed Data, Search and Software Systems, Managed Language Implementation, Performance Analysis, Security and supporting Real-Time Applications, Trust and Safety and Big Data.