About Me

After 5 years work under the supervision of Professor Mats Heimdahl, I successfully graduated with a Ph.D in Computer Science in May 2011. Thanks go to all those that made this possible! It was fun, productive ride.

After graduation, I left for a postdoctoral position at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) under the supervision of Professor Gregg Rothermel (and working closely with Professor Moonzoo Kim). I should be there until roughly June 2013, so if you're looking to hire around that time, I'll be looking for a research position. Have talent; will travel.

As I have graduated, I have no plans to update this page. I've created a new webpage at KAIST, but if you're really interested in contacting or learning about me, please email.

About My Dissertation

Since my papers should all be available via the usual sources, and there are lots of ways to track them, I've omitted the usual list of publications. Unfortunately, the end product (in theory) of a Ph.D program, the dissertation, is usually harder to track down, so I've included some info here.

My dissertation centers on how artifacts in software testing interact --- specifically the test oracle, the test inputs, and the program itself --- to impact the effectiveness of the testing process. Two key contributions were produced. First, we proposed a theoretical framework for discussing testing based on previous work in the theory of testing. (This part went on to win distinguished paper at ICSE 2011.) Second, we performed a rigorous empirical study controlling for program structure, test coverage criteria, and oracle selection in the domain of safety critical avionics software. As you can guess, we found that these interactions are both theoretically and empirically important in the testing process, strongly impacting effectiveness and often interacting in surprising ways.

You can find a copy of my dissertation here: staats-dissertation.pdf. If for whatever reason that breaks, just email.