Large Scale Debugging

  • Judith Bishop, Galen Hunt, Ben Liblit, and Ed Nightingale

Judith Bishop is director of Computer Science in External Research at Microsoft Research, Redmond, where she devises strategy and implements programs to create strong links between Microsoft’s research groups and universities globally. She represents Microsoft on ACM task forces and is actively involved in the CRA and IFIP. Her research expertise is in programming languages and distributed systems, with a strong practical bias and an interest in compilers and design patterns. She has more than 90 publications, including 15 books on programming languages that are available in six languages and read worldwide. Judith has a distinguished background in academia, having taught in the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the United States, before joining Microsoft from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 2009. Judith serves frequently on international editorial, programme, and award committees, and has received numerous awards and distinctions, most recently the IFIP Outstanding Service Award in 2009 and the SA Computer Society Fellowship Award in 2008. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of South Africa, among others.

Galen Hunt is principal researcher of the Microsoft Research Operating Systems Group. He joined Microsoft Research in 1997, where he has stayed, except for a two and one-half-year sabbatical, in the Windows Server Division. Galen’s more successful past efforts include Menlo, Singularity, Detours, and the first prototype of Windows Media Player and its networking protocols. Galen’s less successful efforts include graduate work in Distributed Shared Memory and building a distributed version of the CLR in 1999. He has shipped bugs in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Automated Deployment Services. Galen holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester (where he contributed to GCC 2.1), a BS in Physics from the University of Utah (where he contributed to Linux 0.11), and more than 50 patents. Before graduate school, Galen worked at a startup firm reverse engineering file formats for tax programs. Aside from systems research, Galen enjoys spending time with his wife, daughter, and son.

Ben Liblit is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Professor Liblit’s research interests include programming languages and software engineering generally, with particular emphasis on combining machine learning with static and dynamic analysis for program understanding and debugging.

Professor Liblit worked as a professional software engineer for four years before beginning graduate study. His experience has inspired a research style that emphasizes practical, best-effort techniques that cope with the ugly complexities of real-world software development. Professor Liblit completed his Ph.D. in 2004 at UC Berkeley with advisor Alex Aiken, and received the 2005 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his work on post-deployment statistical debugging.

Ed Nightingale is a researcher on the operating systems group at Microsoft Research. He enjoys working on just about anything related to systems research. Lately, that has involved OS support for new memory technologies, such as Phase Change Memory, data mining, heterogeneous hardware architectures, and large-scale storage systems.

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