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Presently, I am studying genomics and proteomics, with the objective of starting a new vein of research. When I was asked to develop a course in Perl programming for the Bioinformatics concentration at Hunter College, I began to study the computational problems in genomics. It did not take long to realize that there are many open, important, difficult, computational problems in these areas. It did not take any longer to realize as well that the most interesting problems to me all require an extensive understanding of the structure of molecules, genes, and proteins. My lifelong interest in spatial relationships and my first career as an architect and builder push me towards the problem of predicting the spatial structure of protein molecules from the nucleotide sequences of the DNA molecules from which they are ultimately expressed. The medical importance of this problem cannot be overstated, because the three dimensional structure of proteins is a major factor in their functionality. But right now, I am doing mostly background reading in basic biology, chemistry, some physics, and bioinformatics, and perusing the current state of knowledge.
My thesis work was a study of concurrent software testing; a brief summary of which is encapsulated in [12]. Although testing conventional software is in itself a difficult problem, concurrent software testing is immensely harder. While one cannot quantify the testing effort without making a lot of formal statements, roughly put, the cost of concurrent software testing is expontentially related to the cost of sequential software testing.
I also investigated the various methods of measuring software reliability, with my thesis advisor, Dr. Elaine J. Weyuker, [11,13]. For many years, I studied software testing strategies from both empirical and theoretical viewpoints. I compared different testing strategies through experimentation and analysis [1,2,6,7,8,9]. I also investigated measures by which one can actually compare testing strategies [10]. One of my Ph.D. students, Vladimir Fleyshgakker, and I proposed a hardware architecture for mutation testing and mutation analysis [3,5] as well as more efficient serial algorithms for mutation analysis [4]. Eventually, I found most of this research frustrating, because almost always, the results indicated that, for software to be judged nearly error-free, the amount of testing would have to be far in excess of that which industry would ever undertake. The research began to feel like nothing more than an academic exercise, and I felt that I did not measure up when I compared my accomplishments to those of my colleagues in the medical fields.
I turned my attention to medical software, specifically computer-based, ophthalmologic exams. I worked with a company that sought to develop computer based eye exams such as visual field tests, acuity tests, and contrast sensitivity tests. My work included developing algorithms and validating the software that ran the exams. The goal was to revolutionize the delivery of eye care to people who did not live near large medical centers by making these eye tests available on the internet and making it possible for doctors in remote regions to have access to high quality eye testing equipment.
Ph. D., (Computer
Science), Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, New York University,
1987
M. S., (Computer Science), Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, New York
University, 1984
B. A., summa cum laude, (Mathematics), Hunter College of CUNY, 1982
B. Architecture, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 1973
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