Congratulations to Prof. Lionel Briand for being named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)! As the world’s largest computing society, being an ACM Fellow is a significant and selective honour, recognising Prof. Briand’s many achievements in the field of automated software testing and software engineering in general.
ACM brings together computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. The organisation is well known for the A.M. Turing Award, and consistently leverages its international respect and leadership to shape public policy worldwide. Out of ACM’s nearly 100,000 members, from more than 190 countries, only 1% are Fellows, demonstrating the highly selective nature of this award. Fellows are members who have made outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology, and/or provided outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.
Prof. Briand is a leading researcher in the field of software engineering. Currently he has shared appointments between the University of Ottawa, Canada and SnT, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust of the University of Luxembourg. At the University of Ottawa he holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) on “Intelligent Software Dependability and Compliance”. Here at SnT, he has led our Software Verification and Validation research group since 2012.
In the course of his 25-year career, Prof. Briand’s work has been guided by a strong commitment to collaborative research. He has worked with companies in the automotive, aerospace, energy, financial, and legal domains, always striving to lead and apply cutting-edge engineering research to real-world problems. His academic expertise includes software testing and verification, applications of AI to software engineering, model-driven software development, requirements engineering, and empirical software engineering.
“In the last 20 years or so, I have adopted a somewhat unusual way of running research projects,” said Prof. Briand. “Instead of identifying research problems solely by reviewing the research literature or through discussions with academic colleagues, I focus on analysing problems in direct collaboration with industry partners, assess the state of the art with respect to the identified problems, and devise novel, practical solutions through research.”
The ACM Fellow award adds to a number of honours Prof. Briand has already received for his ground-breaking work. In 2010 he was named an IEEE Fellow for work on testing object-oriented systems. Other IEEE awards include the IEEE Computer Society Harlan Mills award in 2012, and being elected the Reliability Engineer of the year in 2013 by the IEEE Reliability Society. At SnT, he has held an FNR PEARL Chair, which is the top funding instrument in Luxembourg to attract and support leading international researchers. He was also the first researcher in Luxembourg to receive an ERC Advanced Grant, in 2016, which is the most prestigious individual grant in the EU.
“It is a great honour to be recognised by ACM through this prestigious award,” said Prof. Briand. “My work has always been motivated by seeking impact on society and industry through research and innovation. Becoming an ACM Fellow will underline the importance of that type of impact-driven research as we move forward in the software engineering research community.”