Kristen Rachelle Walcott Associate Professor Department of Computer Science Masters of Engineering in Software Engineering Program Director University of Colorado Colorado Springs Office Information Engineering, Room 192 Contact Information Mailing Address: Kristen R. Walcott Department of Computer Science 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway Colorado Springs, CO 80918 Email: kwalcott at uccs dot edu

About Me

My research interests lie in the area of software testing and computer architecture with emphasis on software testing and debugging in resource-constrained environments such as mobile devices and embedded systems. My dissertation work was completed under the advisement of Dr. Mary Lou Soffa on how hardware performance monitors and mechanisms can be exploited for use in software testing.

In recent years, my research has expanded to include security issues in software engineering, software testing in IoT, and user interaction for testing. I am also interested in developing new metrics and analysis techniques in software testing in each of these areas.

I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in May 2012. The title of my thesis was "Testing in Resource-Constrained Environments" and can be found here.

In May 2007, I completed my masters of computer science degree with Sudhanva Gurumurthi. My masters project was with regard to dynamically predicting architectural vulnerability factors using a few easy to extract microarchitectural metrics. The work was presented at ISCA in San Diego, June 2007.

I received my bachelors degree at Allegheny College in 2005. At Allegheny, I double majored in Applied Computer Science and Mathematics, working under Dr. Gregory M. Kapfhammer in Computer Science and Dr. Tamara Lakins in mathematics. In computer science, I focused on time-aware regression test prioritization techniques. In mathematics, I concentrated on group theory, particularly Burnside's Lemma. Burnside's Lemma is a result in group theory which is useful in taking account of symmetry when counting mathematical objects.

My CV can be seen here

Guides for Graduate Students

Guide to Writing PhD, Masters Thesis, and Masters Project Proposals

Guide to How to Ask for a Reference Letter (for work, scholarships, graduate school, etc...)

Publications and Presentations

Conference Papers

Thomas Hastings and Kristen R. Walcott. “Continuous Verification of Open Source Components in a World of Weak Links." To appear in the proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering- workshop (ISSREW)- The 12th IEEE International Workshop on Software Certification (WoSoCer). Oct 2022.

Matthew Moore and Kristen R. Walcott. “Generating Human-like Motion to Defeat Interaction-Based CAPTCHAs" To appear in FTC 2022 proceedings in Springer series "Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems" Oct 2022.

Taniza Sultana and Kristen R. Walcott. “NaPP: Notification and Push Performance in Wearable Devices." To appear in FTC 2022 proceedings in Springer series "Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems" Oct 2022.

James Klein and Kristen R. Walcott. “Exploiting Telnet Security Flaws in the Internet of Things." In the Proceedings of the Future of Information and Communications Conference (FICC). March 2019. (39% acceptance rate)

Thomas Hastings and Kristen R. Walcott. “User Interaction Metrics for Hybrid Mobile Applications.” In the Proceedings of the 16th Int'l Conference on Software Engineering & Research and Practice (SERP ‘18). July 2018. (19% acceptance rate)

Jonathan Sanders and Kristen R. Walcott. “TADS: Automating Device State to Android Test Suite Testing.” In the Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Wireless Networks (ICWN 2018). July 2018. (19% acceptance rate).

Evan Lojewski and Kristen R. Walcott. “LwProf: Lightweight Profiling and Coverage Tool for Embedded Software.” In the Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Embedded Systems, Cyber-physical Systems, and Applications (ESCS 2018). July 2018. (21% acceptance rate).

Dan Boxler and Kristen R. Walcott. “Static Taint Analysis Tools to Detect Information Flows.” In the Proceedings of the 16th Int'l Conference on Software Engineering & Research and Practice (SERP ‘18). July 2018. (19% acceptance rate)

Gordon Brown and Kristen R. Walcott. “Using Deep Packet Inspection to Detect Mobile Application Privacy Threats.” In the Proceedings of the 16th Int'l Conference on Software Engineering & Research and Practice (SERP’18). July 2018. (19% acceptance rate)

Jeshua Kracht, Jacob Petrovic, Kristen R. Walcott-Justice. “Empirically Evaluating the Quality of Automatically Generated and Manually Written Test Suites.” In the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Quality Software (QSIC 2014), Dallas, Texas, October 2014. (26% acceptance rate).(Presentation slides)

Kristen R. Walcott-Justice, Jason Mars, and Mary Lou Soffa. THeME: A System for Testing by Hardware Monitoring Events. In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2012. (Presentation slides)

Mary Lou Soffa, Kristen R. Walcott, Jason Mars. Exploiting Hardware Advances for Software Testing and Debugging (NIER Track). In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2011.

Sara Alspaugh, Kristen R. Walcott, Michael Belanich, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, and Mary Lou Soffa. Efficient Time-Aware Prioritization with Knapsack Solvers. In the Proceedings of the ASE 2007 Workshop on Empirical Assessment of Software Engineering Languages and Technologies. Atlanta, Georgia, November 2007.

R. Peter Weistroffer, Kristen R. Walcott, Greg Humphreys, and Jason Lawrence. Efficient Basis Decomposition for Scattered Reflectance Data. In the Proceedings of the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering. Grenoble, June 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott, Greg Humphreys, and Sudhanva Gurumurthi. Dynamic Prediction of Architectural Vulnerability from Microarchitectural State. In the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA). San Diego, California, June 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, Robert Roos, and Mary Lou Soffa. Time-Aware Test Suite Prioritization. In the Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). Portland, Maine, June 2006.

Journal Publications

Darin Weffenstette and Kristen R. Walcott. "DynaMut: A Mutation Testing Tool for Industry-Level Embedded System Applications." To appear in the International Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications (IJESA), Volume 8, September 2018. (15% acceptance rate)

Dustin Bingham and Kristen R. Walcott. “StaticMock: A Mock Object Framework for Compiled Languages." In the International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Volume 9, Number 4, July 2018. (28% acceptance rate)

Cody Hanson and Kristen R. Walcott. “NETCDL: The Network Certification Description Language." In the International Journal of Computational Science, Information Technology, and Control Engineering (IJCSITCE), Volume 5, Number 3, July 2018. (33.3% acceptance rate)

Poorani Dharmasivam and Kristen R. Walcott. “LDTT: A Low Level Driver Unit Testing Tool.” In the International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Volume 9, Number 4, July 2018. (28% acceptance rate)

Sarojini Balasubramanian and Kristen R. Walcott. “Characterization of open-source applications and test suites.” In the International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Volume 9, Number 4, July 2018. (28% acceptance rate)

Hessah Alkaoud and Kristen R. Walcott. “Quality Metrics of Test Suites in Test-Driven Designed Applications.” In the International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Volume 9, Number 3, May 2018. (16% acceptance rate) (Cited by 1)

Daniel Fiedler, Kristen Walcott, Thomas Richardson, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, Ahmed Amer, and Panos K. Chrysanthis. Towards the Measurement of Tuple Space Performance. In ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review 33(3), Dec. 2005.

Book Chapters

Kristen R. Walcott-Justice (2014). “Exploiting Hardware Monitoring in Software Engineering.” In Advances in Computers (Vol 93), Ali R. Hurson and Atif M. Memon, Ed. Academic Press. March 2014.

Presentations

Sara Alspaugh, Kristen R. Walcott, Michael Belanich, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, and Mary Lou Soffa. Efficient Time-Aware Prioritization with Knapsack Solvers. Presented at the ASE 2007 Workshop on Empirical Assessment of Software Engineering Languages and Technologies. Atlanta, Georgia, November 5, 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott. Dynamic Prediction of Architectural Vulnerability from Microarchitectural State. Master's Presentation, May 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, and Mary Lou Soffa. Time-Aware Test Suite Prioritization. Presented at the International Symposium for Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), Portland, Maine, July 2006.

Mary Lou Soffa, Kristen Walcott, and Gregory M. Kapfhammer. Exploring Time-Aware Test Suite Prioritization. Presented at Microsoft Research in China, June 2006.

Daniel Fiedler, Kristen Walcott, Thomas Richardson, Gregory M. Kapfhammer, Ahmed Amer, and Panos K. Chrysanthis. SETTLE: A Tuple Space Benchmarking and Testing Framework. Presented at the Ninth Jini Community Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, October, 2005.

Technical Reports

Armando Fox, David A. Patterson, Richard Ilson, Samuel Joseph, Kristen Walcott-Justice, and Rose Williams Software Engineering Curriculum Technology Transfer: Lessons learned from MOOCs and SPOCs UCB/EECS-2014-17. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley. March, 2014.

Kristen R. Walcott, Greg Humphreys, and Sudhanva Gurumurthi. Dynamic Prediction of Architectural Vulnerability from Microarchitectural State. CS-2007-05. Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia. November 2006.

Kristen R. Walcott. Prioritizing Regression Test Suites for Time-Constrained Execution Using a Genetic Algorithm.  CS05-11. Department of Computer Science, Allegheny College, May 2005.

Kristen R. Walcott.  Applications and Analysis of Burnside's Theorem. Department of Mathematics, Allegheny College. May 2005.

Invited Presentations

Kristen R. Walcott, Kristin Rozier, and Katie Panciera. Choosing Your Building Blocks. Presented at the Grace Hopper Conference for Women in Computing, Keystone, CO, October 2008.

Barbara Ryder and Kristen R. Walcott. Finding a Research Topic. Presented at the CRA-W Graduate Student Cohort, Seattle, WA, March 2008.

Diane Litman and Kristen R. Walcott. Finding Academic Year Funding. Presented at the CRA-W Graduate Student Cohort, San Francisco, CA, March 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott. Research Opportunities in Computer Science. Presented at Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, February 2007.

Posters

Kristen R. Walcott.  Dynamic Prediction of Architectural Vulnerability. Presented at University of Virginia Computer Science Day Celebration, February 2007 and CRA-W Graduate Student Cohort, March 2007.

Kristen R. Walcott.  Time-Aware Test Suite Prioritization. Presented at University of Virginia Computer Science Day Celebration, February 2006.

Classes and Activities

Computer Science 3300: Software Engineering I
Textbooks: Armando Fox and David Patterson. Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing, Beta Edition. Strawberry Canyon. 2012.
When taught: Spring 2013

Textbooks: Armando Fox and David Patterson. Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing, 2nd Beta Edition. Strawberry Canyon. 2013.
When taught: Spring 2014

Textbooks: Armando Fox and David Patterson. Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing, 1st Edition. Strawberry Canyon. 2014.
When taught: Spring 2020, (sabbatical Fall 2019), Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014

Textbooks: Armando Fox and David Patterson. Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing, 2nd Edition Beta. Strawberry Canyon. 2021.
When taught: Fall 2020

Computer Science 4300/5300: Advanced Software Engineering
Textbooks: Armando Fox and David Patterson. Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing, 2nd Edition Beta. Strawberry Canyon. 2021.
When taught: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2021

Computer Science 5310: Software Requirements (4310/5310 beginning Spring 2022)
Textbooks
- Karl E. Wiegers. Software Requirements, 2nd Edition. Microsoft Press. 2003.
- Axel van Lamsweerde. Requirements Engineering: From System Goals to UML Models to Software Specifications. Wiley Publishing. 2011.
- Ben Rinzler. Telling Stories: A Short Path to Writing Better Software Requirements. Wiley Publishing. 2009. (used Spring 2012 only)
When taught: Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2012

Computer Science 5320: Software Design (4320/5320 beginning Spring 2021)
Textbooks
- Carlos E. Otero. Software Engineering Design: Theory and Practice. CRC Press. 2012.
- David S. Platt. Why Software Sucks… and What You Can Do About It. Addison-Wesley. 2006.
When taught: Spring 2013

Computer Science 5340: Software Maintenance (4340/5340 beginning Spring 2021)
Textbooks
- Kshirasager Naik and Priyadarshi Tripathy. Software Testing and Quality Assurance: Theory and Practice. Wiley. 2008.
- Michael C. Feathers. Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Prentice Hall. 2005.
When taught: Spring 2021, (sabbatical Fall 2019), Spring 2018, Fall 2016, Spring 2015, Fall 2013

Computer Science 5350: Software Project Management (4350/5350 beginning Fall 2020)
Textbooks:
- Cockburn, Alastair. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition)
- Glen, Paul and Maria McManus. The Geek Leader’s handbook. 2014.
- de Jong, Jorrit. Dealing with Dysfunction. Brookings Institution, 2016.
When taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2019

Computer Science 5371: Software Testing for Mobile and Embedded Systems
No textbook used. 20-30 publications from ACM and IEEE considered.
When taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2014, Summer 2013 (as CS5060)

Computer Science 1010: Introduction to Information Technology (UGrad at University of Virginia)
Textbook: Lawrence Snyder. Fluency with Information Technology: Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities, 5th Edition.
When taught: Fall 2011

Arduino: Unleash Your Inner Inventor, Girls STEM day, University of Colorado- Colorado Springs, Fall 2012 and 2013.

Previous Teaching Experience

Instructor, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia: Fall 2011

Introduction to Information Technology, CS 1010

Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia: Aug 05 – May 06

Information Assurance Graduate Seminar, CS 651

Introduction to Computing, CS 101

Computer Science from Ada and Euclid to Quantum Computing and the World Wide Web, CS 150

Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Allegheny College: Aug 02 – May 05

Introduction to Computer Science I, CS 101

Introduction to Computer Science II, CS 102

Awards and Honors

Professional Activities/Memberships
UCCS SWE (Society of Women Engineers) Faculty Advisor (Main SWE website)
IEEE
ACM/SIGSOFT
ACM/SIGARCH
ACM
ACM-W Student Chapter- Publicity Chair
University of Virginia Computer Science Graduate Student Group Steering Committee (CSGSGSC)