The Technical University of Denmark is happy to welcome Professor Barbara Weber as professor in Software Engineering.
In celebraton of her appointment DTU Compute is happy to invite you to attend Barbara Weber’s inaugural lecture followed by a reception Friday, 7th October 2016 at 3 pm, building 101, 1st floor, room 1, Technical University of Denmark, Anker Englundsvej 101a, 2800 Kongens Lyngby. Everybody is welcome. Registration is not required.
Programme
- 3.00 - 3.10 pm - Welcome by Professor, Head of Department Rasmus Larsen
- 3.10 - 3.40 pm - Inaugural lecture titled ”Modern Life without Software – Unthinkable!”
- 3.40 - 3.50 pm - Questions and summing up
- 4.00 - 5.00 pm - Reception
Abstract Inaugural lecture "Modern Life without Software - Unthinkable!" by Barbara Weber
We are living in a time where computers are everywhere and increasingly connected. Modern companies and even governments are increasingly software-managed and even software-defined as they become more digitalized and automated. The effects of digitalization have also reached every corner of our private lives, enabled new economic models like the sharing economy, and transformed entire industries. Sharing economy startups Uber and Airbnb, for example, disrupted the transport and hospitality industry.
From its inception, the software engineering discipline underwent substantial paradigm shifts moving from traditional monolithic applications to component- and service-oriented architectures. With the growing availability of reusable components with standard interfaces, the role of a software engineer is increasingly shifting from developing components to assembling these components intelligently to build innovative software solutions. To enable fast delivery to the end user, lean and agile development as well as DevOps have become mainstream.
With the economic growth more and more being based on software the shortage of software engineers constitutes a considerable challenge, since every unfilled vacancy means a loss of value creation and innovation in society. One way to overcome this gap is by focusing on the improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of software development. Another option is to increase the pool of people who can participate in the development of software by enabling non-experts to build their own software solutions.
In my lecture I will talk about selected research ideas to address these challenges. This includes fundamental research into cognitive load of developers when building software and factors inducing it, laying the basis for the development of better methods and tools to support software engineers and more effective teaching methods. Moreover, I will talk about my vision for enterprise software that can be assembled by end users with domain expertise out of existing components similar to how IKEA allows ordinary people to assemble their furniture.