Luqi
Associate professor of computer science, Naval Postgraduate School

The emerging problem of the 1990s, according to Luqi, is software quality, in addition to the continuing battle of the 80s to solve productivity problems. Software failures sometimes have serious consequences, including death, injury, and financial losses. These problems are often caused by people failing to understand and communicate system and resource requirements. Huge amounts of resources are wasted each year building elaborate systems that do not solve the right or the entire problem. Luqi is particularly interested in software automation, since it can improve software productivity and reliability.

Her work in computer-aided prototyping involves automating development tasks currently carried out by engineers. She and her Prototyping Research Group are trying to

• use specifications and abstractions to make prototypes easier to construct, understand, and analyze,
• use advances in software modeling to produce tractable formal models of problems, criteria for evaluating solutions, and solution methods, and
• experimentally construct computer-aided prototyping systems (CAPS) to demonstrate the feasibility of automation in software development.

The prototyping approach uses prototype demonstrations to determine and update the requirements of a proposed system during both requirements analysis and the evolutionary life cycle. Such demos expose misunderstandings and enable software developers and their clients to converge to an accurate formulation or a reasonable estimate of the system's goal. Prototyping tools provide decision support for formulating a design and establishing system feasibility; for example, evaluating hard real-time deadlines for software functions relative to proposed hardware configurations.

This research started a new area of investigation, combining general software engineering for system modeling with AI automatic-programming techniques to achieve software productivity and quality. Luqi initially had trouble convincing people that the problems had substance and that solutions were possible until her prototyping systems started to work. Progress depended on her maintaining confidence in what made sense in the face of initial discouraging comments by peers; such criticism actually motivated her not to quit. To prove that these new ideas could work, Luqi invested a great deal of effort and long hours to fill in her students' steep training gaps and to manage the bureaucratic processes for establishing a lab. A system that can demonstrate the effectiveness of new ideas is a very strong argument about the importance and significance of a scientific contribution.

Suggestions:

1. Set high professional standards (no difference for men or women) for your job. Focus on the research, and ignore irritations caused by people with handicapped personalities.
2. Choose research topics with important long-term effects on society. Though important, theoretical papers are valuable only if they can be applied to real problems.
3. Do not submit to unreasonable pressures. Actions motivated by gender discrimination will not stand up under public scrutiny. Most people are professionals, but when you encounter one that is not, stick to your position and defend it using rational methods. Professional success is the best defense.
4. Work with the people around you and the people from professional societies such as the IEEE Computer Society. Warmth, help, and support can only come from good people. Seek administration support when needed.
5. Think of the role of the traditional mother: The lifetime efforts of a large portion of the population are taken for granted. We are lucky to have the chance to follow Madam Curie's footsteps.
6. Remember the words of Albert Einstein: ``In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity,'' and ``Imagination is more important than knowledge.''