Dr Jim Buckley University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
Email: Jim.Buckley@ul.ie Tel:- +353-61-213531, Fax:- +353-61-202734

Short Biography:

Jim Buckley obtained a honours BSc degree in Biochemistry from the University of Galway in 1989. In 1994 he was awarded an MSc degree in Computer Science from the University of Limerick and he followed this with a PhD in Computer Science from the same University in 2002. He currently works as a lecturer in the Computer Science and Information Systems Department at the University of Limerick, Ireland. His main research interests are in theories of information seeking, software reengineering and software maintenance. In this context, he has published actively at many peer-reviewed conferences / workshops and is a Faculty Fellow with the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Dublin. He has also co-organized a number of international conferences and workshops in this domain. He currently coordinates 2 research projects at the University: one in the area of software visualization and the other in architecture-centric re-engineering and evolution.

Research Interests:

His core research interest is in the area of programmers’ information needs as they evolve software system. In particular, he is interested in identifying their information needs with regard to their task contexts, and thus developing and evaluating software representations for their ability to convey this information effectively. In this area, he has one graduated MSc student and three Post-graduate students, two at PhD level. The group has published three journal papers, four peer-reviewed conference papers and four peer-reviewed workshop papers.

A complementary strand of research is directed towards obtaining the information necessary to generate useful software representations. Thus he also actively engages in software re-engineering research. At the moment this is specifically targeted at the agenda of semi-automated component recovery and component interoperability. While this research as still at an early stage, funding from Enterprise Ireland and an industrial partner (QAD) has been obtained for this work and he currently has two PhD students working in these areas. Thus, his research interests span software evolution and software re-engineering processes.

Recent Publications:

Cleary B., Exton C., Buckley J., and English M.. (2009). “An empirical analysis of information retrieval based concept location techniques in software comprehension” Empirical Software Engineering: Volume 14, Issue1 (2009), Page 93.

Buckley J. Le Gear A., Johnston T., Cadogan R., Looby B., Exton C., Koschke R., (2008) "Encapsulating Targeted Component Abstractions Using Software Reflexion Modelling". International Journal Software Evolution and Maintenance: Research and Practice. Vol 20, pp 107-134

Buckley J., Mens T., Zenger M., Rashid A. and Kneisel G. (2005). “Towards a Taxonomy of Software Change”. International Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice. Vol 17. pp 309-332.

Hughes C. and Buckley J. and Exton C. (2005). “A Framework For Evaluating Comprehension of Concurrent Software”. Computer Science Education. Vol. 15, No. 1. pp 7-24.

O’Brien M., Buckley J. and Shaft T. (2004). “Expectation-based, Inference-based and Bottom-up Software Comprehension”. International Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice Val 16. pp 427-447.

Kelly T., and Buckley J.. (2009) “An In-Vivo Study of the Cognitive Levels Employed by Programmers During Software Maintenance” To appear in the Proceedings of the 21^st Annual Conference on Program Comprehension.

Addendum: addendum_BloomICPC_2009.doc

Rosik J., Le Gear A., Buckley J., and Ali Barbar M., (2008) “An Industrial Case Study of Architecture Conformance”. To appear in the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement.

Khaironi Y.S., Buckley J. (2008) “Observing Open Source Programmers’ Information Seeking” Proceedings of PPIG 2008, pp 15-24.

English, M., Buckley, J. and Cahill, T. (2007) “Fine Grained Software Metrics in Practice”, Proceedings of 1st International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, Madrid, Spain, Sept., 2007. pp 81-90.

Buckley J., Exton C., Quigley A., and LeGear A.. (2007) “ESCAPE Meta Modeling in Software Engineering: When Premature Commitment is Useful in Representations” Proceedings of PPIG 2007 pp 72-85.

Exton C., Avram G., Buckley J., and LeGear A.. (2007) “An Experiential Report on the Limitations of Experimentation as a means of Empirically Investigating Software Practitioners.” Proceedings of PPIG 2007 pp 173-184

Le Gear A., Buckley J., Mcilwaine C.. (2006) “Exercising Control Over the Design of Evolving Software Systems Using an Inverse Application of Reflexion Modelling”. Proceedings of CASCON Ireland. IBM Publishing. pp 71-81

Buckley J., O’Brien M. and Power N.. (2006) “Empirically Refining a Model of Programmers’ Information Seeking Behaviour during Software Maintenance”. Proceedings of the 18^th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programmers Interest Group. pp 168-182.

Kelly T. and Buckley J.. (2006) “A Context-Aware Analysis Scheme for Bloom’s Taxonomy”. Proceedings of the 14^th International Conference on Program Comprehension. pp 67-76.

Le Gear A., Buckley J., Collins J.J., and O’Dea K. (2005) “Software Reconn-exion: Understanding Software Using a Variation on Software Reconnaissance and Reflexion Modelling” In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering. pp 34-43

Carew D., Exton C., and Buckley J. (2005) “An Empirical Investigation of the Comprehensibility of Requirements Specification” In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering. pp 256-265

English M., Buckley J. and Cahill T. (2005) “A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed”. In Proceedings of the 4^th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering. pp 469-478

Le Gear A., Buckley J., Cleary B., Collins J.J. (2005). “Achieving a Reuse Perspective within a Component Recovery Process: An Industrial Scale Case Study”. Accepted, to appear 13^th International Workshop on Program Comprehension.

O’Brien M.P. and Buckley J. (2005) “Modeling the Information-Seeking Behavior of Programmers – An Empirical Approach” Accepted, to appear 13^th International Workshop on Program Comprehension.

English M., Buckley J., Cahill T. and Lynch K. (2005) “An Empirical Study of the Use of Friends in C++ Software” Accepted, to appear 13^th International Workshop on Program Comprehension.

Buckley J. and Exton C. (2003). “Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Framework for Assessing Programmers’ Knowledge of Software Systems” 11^th International Workshop on Program Comprehension.

Le Gear A., Buckley J., Galvin S and Cleary B.. (2004) “Towards a Reconniassance-Based Component Recovery Process”. Proceedings of the 1^st workshop on Software Evolution Transformations. Delft 2004

English M., Buckley J. and Cahill T.. (2003). “Applying Meyer’s Taxonomy to Object Oriented Software Systems”. In Proceedings of SCAM ’03 (Source Code Analysis and Manipulation 2003)

Buckley J.. (2003) “Characterizing Software Comprehension for Programmers in Practice”. In Proceedings of the 13^th workshop of the Psychology of Programmers Interest Group 2003. 313-318. University of Keele.