Abstract: Martin Rinard will present the stories of two research projects. The failure-oblivious computing project developed techniques for keeping systems running and delivering useful results to their users in the face of otherwise fatal errors or security vulnerabilities. The loop perforation project developed techniques for improving performance at the cost of small accuracy losses. Both projects provided new insights into the fundamental empirical resilience of existing software systems. I will trace the arc of both projects from the initial conception of the basic approach through the elaboration of the new techniques to the final project outcomes. One goal is to highlight general themes that often emerge in computer science research. The talk should be accessible to anyone who has written a computer program that contains a bug.

Short Bio: Dr. Rinard is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is an ACM Fellow, and has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF Career Award, and many Best Paper awards at prestigious conferences. His students and postdocs have gone on to top positions in academia and industry. His research focuses on software systems and related topics, including computer security, program analysis and compilation, machine learning and programming, approximate computing, and software robustness and reliability.