Carnegie Mellon University

photo of ivan ruchkin

April 26, 2017

Ruchkin Receives Frank Anger Memorial Award

By Josh Quicksall

The Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (ACM SIGSOFT) has named Software Engineering Ph.D. student, Ivan Ruchkin, as their 2017 recipient of Frank Anger Memorial Award.

Established in honor of the late software engineering leader, Dr. Frank Anger, the award recognizes students with promising research interests that bridge the gap between software engineering and embedded systems; a hallmark of Dr. Anger’s work.

Ruchkin was selected for his work on cyber-physical systems. Specifically, his work addresses two growing concerns in the design and assurance of embedded systems: predictability and completeness. In both instances, Ruchkin puts forward an approach which addresses these concerns through systematic modeling and analysis.

David Garlan, Ruchkin’s advisor and an ACM Fellow, notes, “This is an ideal match with Ivan’s research in cyber-physical systems, which is helping to bridge the gap between design disciplines of software and physical systems. Ivan’s research in this area has already distinguished itself with several best paper awards, and he is well-deserving of this honor.”

For Ruchkin, this award is exciting; not only for the validation it provides but also for the future of the field. “This award means that the software engineering community supports my appraisal of the opportunities for research and sees my approach as promising. Software engineering is a source of techniques, methods, and philosophy in my research – and it's good to know we're on the same page.”

The award is to be presented to Ruchkin during the ACM Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering, to be held in Paderborn, Germany this fall.