Chair’s Message

Message To Our Members

The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s largest professional organization devoted to computer science and the TCSE (Technical Council on Software Engineering) is the voice of software engineering within the IEEE and the Computer Society. TCSE has the duty to advance awareness of software engineering and to support education and training through conferences, workshops, and other professional activities that contribute to the growth and enrichment of software engineering academics and professionals. This is your organization. It should serve you in terms of your professional growth, but it should also serve your business, your government, your financial environment, your health, your home and family, and your social networks.
Software is everywhere and is critical to the financial, environmental, physical, and social well-being of our world. As software engineers, we have incredible opportunities, and enormous responsibilities to society as a vibrant, multi-disciplinary, and rapidly expanding field. Consequently, the TCSE is in the privileged and also sensitive position to exert an enormous influence on the society.
In the history of the TCSE we have been leaders in working with professional societies, governments, academia, non-profits organizations, and industries to create the resources and opportunities for educating and inspiring software engineers. One of my goals as the TCSE chair is to evolve our collaboration platform to extend our community to new members including practitioners and entrepreneurs. This would help the TCSE to enhance the role of software in our modern society. It is also critical to identify and implement effective mechanisms for increasing industry participation in the TCSE, and in TCSE sponsored conferences, to create awareness and synergies between researchers and practitioners. This would increase the impact of software engineering research and encourage more industry-university collaborations. My other goal is to focus on creating an inclusive and transparent environment that recognizes and welcomes diverse cultural, gender, and ethnic backgrounds. This would incorporate diverse perspectives for preparing the next generation of researchers in Software Engineering.

Biography

Ladan Tahvildari is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Tahvildari’s general research interests are in the field of software engineering, and to date her focus has spanned the areas of software architecture, autonomic computing, security, and software analysis/testing. The underlying theme of her research has been to devise techniques and tools that aid with the construction, analysis, and maintenance of large-scale software systems. She founded the Software Technologies Applied Research Laboratory (www.stargroup.uwaterloo.ca) at the University of Waterloo in 2004. Since then, she has led numerous research activities and collaborated extensively with high-tech companies and non-profit organizations to ensure real-world applicability of her research contributions. She has contributed to the training of over 40 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are now in academic and private sector leadership positions.
Tahvildari has been active in IEEE committees. She was an elected Member-at-Large (2016-2018) for the IEEE Technical Council of Software Engineering (TCSE), and the 2018 TCSE Awards Chair. She is currently a Member-at-Large of the IEEE Technical Activities Committee (TAC). She has been on the program and organizing committees of many international conferences. She was Publications Chair of ICSE’19 (Montreal), C0-Chair of ICSME’17 Most Influential Paper Awards (Shanghai), the Publications Chair of ICSE’09 (Vancouver), Workshops Co-Chair of ICSM’08 (Beijing), Program Co-Chair of ICSM’07 (Paris), Working Sessions/Tools Chair of ICPC’06 (Athens), Workshop Chair of WCRE’04 (Delft), and Publicity Chair of WCRE’03 (Victoria). She also served as a guest co-editor for one of the past issues of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Tahvildari has over 10 years of experience as Chair of the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group and served as Chair of the IEEE Computer Society (2004-2008), Kitchener-Waterloo Section in Eastern Canada. She has also received a variety of awards/distinctions recognizing her outreach accomplishments.
Tahvildari received her BSc degree (Hons; Ranked First) from the Iran University of Science and Technology. After working in industry for six years, she decided to pursue graduate studies in Canada. She received her MASc and PhD degrees from the University of Waterloo.