Graduate Research

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Graduate Research

• Or how I learned to stop worrying, and love the
  25 hour day.
• by
• Jonathan Sprinkle
• http//ransom.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/
• http//www.isis.vanderbilt.edu/

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Overview

• Whats grad school about?
• Research in general
• The evolution of computing
• Modeling and metamodeling
• How modeling environments affect your world
• Questions and answers

Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove
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But first
My history

• B.S. TTU, May 1999
• Electrical Engineering (controls)
• Computer Engineering (first graduate ever!)
• M.S. Vanderbilt, August 2000

• My future
• Ph.D. Vanderbilt, May 2003

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Other Vanderbilt scholars you may know

• Dean Johnson (PhD Vandy, 1978)
• Jason Scott (BS TTU 95)
• Scooter Ball (BS TTU 01)
• Jason Rowe (BS TTU 01)
• Steve Nordstrom (BS TTU 01)

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Whats grad school about?
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Whats grad school about

• Teaching Assistant (TA)
• You spend 20 hours per week teaching class or
  labs, and grading papers
• Do your own research (for your MS/PhD thesis and
  dissertation) on your own time
• Research Assistant (RA)
• Spend 20 hours per week working (researching)
  for a professor or researcher
• Apply your work directly to your MS/PhD
  thesis/dissertation (no extra work on the side
  required!)
• Pays usually a couple-hundred bucks better than
  TAs

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Research in general

• What is the purpose of a BS in engineering?
• One answer
• To learn how to learn

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Research in general

• What are the requirements for an MS or PhD?
• MS
• Take some classes (usually 24-30 hours of
  classwork, at about 9 hours per semester)
• Write a thesis, which is on a successful piece of
  research youve done
• PhD
• Take some more classes (about 48 more hours than
  the MS)
• Writer a dissertation, which is about research
  that furthers the state of the art, or makes a
  contribution to your field

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Research in general

• So, what does it mean to have an MS or a PhD?
• MS
• You can do research under someone elses
  direction
• You have the ability to make others understand
  what youve done
• You can achieve a goal you set out to do
• PhD
• Everything thats an MS, plus
• You can direct your own research
• You can make others understand what nobody else
  has done before

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Research in general

• So, what good is research?
• Youre not constantly reinventing the wheel,
  because you can look to see if someone else has
  done what you need to have
• Someone elses work might spark a pattern
  recognition for you, in another application
• Plus, you can travel to your alma mater, and tell
  them what the future of computing means for them

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The evolution of computing
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The evolution of computing

• ENIAC and Turings machine
• Physical properties of electromechanical devices
  interpreted to perform a mathematical algorithm
• Algorithms were configured by swapping wires
  around between electromechanical devices
• von Neumann
• Realized that this swapping, or switching could
  be done with the devices themselves, meaning that
  configurations, or programs could be data
  themselves
• Created the von Neumann architecture

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The evolution of computing

• Programming
• First called coding, was the organization of
  1s and 0s into von Neumanns architecture to
  program the algorithm
• Assembly language
• Were textual representations of the 1s and 0s
  that were machine code
• Make programming more readable, but not more
  easily creatable
• People trained for years to get the knack of
  programming, and many never got it

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The evolution of computing

• Computers were invented for
• Playing games
• CIA intelligence gathering
• Crunching numbers
• Destruction of the One Ring

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The evolution of computing

• Computers were invented for
• Playing games
• CIA intelligence gathering
• Crunching numbers
• Destruction of the One Ring

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The evolution of computing

• So, how did this work?

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The evolution of computing

• The vision of FORTRAN
• What if, instead of assembly language
  painstakingly crafted to do math operations
  (e.g., vector arithmetic), there was a language
  that was made for doing those operations
• Thus was born the FORmula TRANslation language,
  or FORTRAN
• Brilliant for 2 reasons
• Now, mathematicians could be trained to program,
  directly applying math knowledge
• Now, there was a language for the domain of
  mathematics

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The evolution of computing

• Over the years, many new languages have emerged
• COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language)
• C/C, Ada, Java, Python, et al.
• However, not all of these are for a specific
  domain
• Therefore, the programmer has to translate the
  problem into code. This is what separates the
  wheat from the chaff.

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The evolution of computing

• Then, came the application
• Lotus 1-2-3 changed business forever, with its
  ability to create balance sheets quickly
• For the domain of accounting, Lotus had created a
  domain specific environment that was easy to use,
  and enabled accountants to use it with little or
  no training
• The only problem was, the application was written
  in clumsy code (probably C), and therefore,
  difficult to evolve and maintain over the years.

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The evolution of computing

• Wouldnt it be great if it were easy to create
  applications that were simple to use, yet useful
  at the same time?

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Modeling and metamodeling

• Rapid design of modeling environments is a recent
  research success in the area of modeling
• It is now possible to create a working domain
  application in a matter of hours instead of
  weeks.
• So what?

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Modeling and metamodeling

• Raise your hand if you like data entry
• Didnt think so
• Unfortunately, lots of data entry has to be done
  in engineering domains
• System configurations
• Plant layout
• Other boring stuff design engineers hate to do

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Modeling and metamodeling

• Wouldnt it be great
• If the domain I was designing for had a language
• If those people who work in that domain could do
  all of the programming, because they know the
  language?
• Doesnt this remind you of FORTRAN?

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Modeling and metamodeling

• Enter the Domain Specific Modeling Environment
  (DSME)
• Custom made for each domain
• Finite state machines
• Digital component layout
• Saturns JIT (Just In Time) plant scheduling
• C class design
• Embedded system design
• Created so that domain users can use these DSMEs
  to do their jobs better

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Modeling and metamodeling

• Lets take an easy example
• VHDL
• Now, would you rather lay out the model
  graphically, or type in all of the text?
• Domain specific modeling helps relieve the
  programmer of mundane or difficult to
  understand chores
• This gives more time to the domain designer
  (thats you!)

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Modeling and metamodeling

• So, whats the idea, here?

Metamodeling environment
Domain specific modeling environment
Executable models
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Modeling and metamodeling

• So, what does a metamodeler do then?
• Designs the language of a DSME
• Creates the types of models, and how they are
  allowed to interact
• Designs how that language is to be interpreted
• For each model type, create a meaning
• Then, the meaning of a designed system is derived
  from the meaning of its components
• Functions much like a compiler
• Designs constraints to help the domain modeler
  know what s/hes doing
• Outlaw certain interactions on a higher level
  (e.g., its not okay to hook two outputs to each
  other in a signal flow model)

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Modeling and metamodeling

• The bridge between design abstraction, and
  modeling tool is found in the meaning of the
  models
• To give meaning to models is the job of a
  metamodeler
• Is this the end of the world for engineers?

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Modeling and metamodeling
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Modeling and metamodeling

• How did it use to be?
• Plant calls engineer
• Engineer designs system
• Plant okays engineers design
• Engineer builds system vicariously for 6
  different plant engineers
• Engineer spends 6 months debugging system, due to
  ambiguous specifications from plant engineers

Design system
Design approval
Implementation
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Modeling and metamodeling

• Now, how should it be?
• Plant calls engineer
• Engineer develops metamodel
• Plant engineers experiment with models
• Plant engineers give feedback
• Final metamodel delivery
• Plant engineers build system

Design metamodel
Experimental approval
Final delivery
System built
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Modeling and metamodeling

• So what happens here?
• The people who used to build their systems with
  memos and ambiguous design descriptions now get
  to program their system into being
• The design engineer who used to have to spend
  valuable hours at the plant, tracing cables and
  copying down robot numbers can now delegate that
  work to the plant engineers
• The plant work ends up being done by the people
  who work at the plant,
• The design work ends up being done by the
  designer.

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What does this mean?

• Why, then, do we need design engineers anymore?
• Couldnt all of this be done with a CsC
  background?
• Remember that TANSTAFL

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What does this mean?

• Engineers still have to be there, to interpret
  what the plant engineers want
• Indeed, the ambiguity of the specification still
  has to be resolved, it only means that the plant
  engineers will understand earlier that there is
  an ambiguity, because they are involved in the
  programming
• This means that in the future, design engineers
  will use more and more computing techniques for
  final deployment (duh!)

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When will I use this stuff?

• Maybe soon, maybe never
• The technology is proven, but the engineering
  world is slow to accept it
• Current research is making DSME development
  easier, and system evolution more practical
• Yours truly will get a PhD with one of these
  topics, and TTU grads are doing research in them
  right now at Vandy

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What have we learned today?

• Research helps further science
• Domain specific modeling can help in two ways
• Design engineers get to design, and dont have to
  waste their time doing implementation
• Domain engineers get more actively involved in
  implementation, and dont waste their time in
  the feedback loop with the designers of the
  system
• DSMEs might not change the world soon, but odds
  are youve used one before, and youll definitely
  use one later.

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What have we left out?

• What kinds of graduate schools are there?
• What grad school should you go to, if you have a
  particular career path that demands it?
• What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen
  swallow?

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Questions and answers
Well HAL, Im damned if I can find anything
wrong with it. Yes. Its puzzling, isnt
it. -- 2001 A Space Odyssey