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Institute Affiliation:
Contact Information:
Email:
bhowden@ucsd.edu
Personal Home Page
| | William E. Howden - Professor
Software testing and analysis, error modeling and prevention, software design, and embedded systems.
Professor Howden has worked in the area of program testing and analysis since 1975, on data-oriented,
communication and, most recently, wireless communication systems. Howden's work in the area includes material on
fault-based testing methods, functional testing, and the use of comments in systematic program analysis. His
recent work includes the development of analysis tools for real time and Ada programs. Howden's book (see bio)
emphasized the use of broad spectrum functional testing, in which tests are used that exercise each of the
functional components of a program, including those from specifications and design. Howden has also done an
analysis of statistical testing methods, and published work on models which describe how methods combine to
produce a cumulative improvement in fault detection and reliability prediction. He has published in areas
including: program analysis and operational integrity; statistical program testing; functional testing; symbolic
testing; test data generation; static analysis; empirical evaluation of testing and analysis methods; theory of
testing; mutation testing; software design; and software development processes. Software confidence--a numerical
measure of confidence that specified properties of a program will be true when the program is executed--is one
current project where Howden is developing methods to increase the levels of confidence that can be established
with a fixed amount of testing resources. Another current research project involves the application of model-based
operational integrity analysis to object-oriented and embedded systems.
Capsule Bio:
William Howden joined the UCSD faculty in 1974 He received his Ph.D. in 1973 from UCI. He is the co-author
of a best selling tutorial on testing, of "Functional Program Testing and Analysis" (McGraw-Hill, 1986), and of
numerous papers on testing and software validation.
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