Identifying Research Problems

Michael D. Ernst
IMDEA Software Institute and University of Washington

Workshop at UPM
Introductions
• I do research in programming langages, software engineering,
security, and related fields
• Professor at the U. of Washington
• on sabbatical at IMDEA Software Institute
• previously Associate Professor at MIT & researcher at Microsoft Research
• maintain a webpage with advice:
https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/

Who are you?

(name, year, topic, research experience, why you are here, what you hope to learn)
The hardest part of research: asking questions
• If you are smart enough to get into graduate school,
you are probably good at answering questions
• That’s what college trained you to learn
• Graduate school teaches you how to ask questions

• Once you ask the right question,

the answer is often obvious
• The question you ask implies a framing of the problem
The characteristics of great research
• Recall a good research paper/talk/result
• What was remarkable about it?
The characteristics of great research
Great research needs:
• idea ⇦ today’s focus
• execution
• presentation
• We will
 Well-presented research convinces you:
1. The problem is interesting
• effect on human welfare, corporate profits, defense
about • evidence: other people have worked on it
the
problem 2. The problem is hard
• other smart people have tried it
• obvious approaches do not work
• problem persists over time
3. The authors have solved the problem
• technical details
• evaluation, such as proofs or experiments
Sources of research ideas
• Always be working on something (even if it won’t be your thesis topic)
• Think about problems, difficulties, or irritations
• You might get sidetracked onto something more important
• Learn about other research: attend talks, read papers, take classes
• future work they identified
• connections they did not make
• assumptions
• other criticisms
• Your advisor
• OK for starter projects, master's projects
• not OK for PhD thesis topic
Think outside the box:
A good research idea often “cheats”
• If you take the same approach as other people,
you are likely to be no more successful than they are
• Cut the Gordian knot: take a different approach
• Example:
• Artificial intelligence vs. brute force (chess, speech, etc.)
Bad ideas are essential
• Most ideas are bad ideas
• If you have lots of ideas, some will be good
• It’s better to have bad ideas than no ideas
• I can teach people how to filter
• It’s harder to teach courage and imagination
• Filtering is initially your advisor’s role
• You will get better with time,
and spend less time evaluating and discarding bad ideas
• Have faith in your own judgment, too
• Your advisor is not infallible. Examples: Daikon, IGJ
• Generate lots of ideas before filtering
• Breadth-first, not depth-first, approach to the problem
Heilmeier’s Catechism
(questions to be asked about any research proposal)
1. What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no
jargon.
2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
3. What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
4. Who cares?
5. If you're successful, what difference will it make?
6. What are the risks and the payoffs?
7. How much will it cost?
8. How long will it take?
9. What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?
Brainstorming strategies
Automation
• Find a task that is currently done manually, or that is time-consuming
or difficult
• Thoughtfully examine the manual process
• What reasoning does the person do?
• Can you automate that process?
Contrarianism
• Turn the conventional wisdom on its head
• Do the opposite of what everyone else expects
• You must do this thoughtfully: you have to justify why, and why it matters

• Example: sequentializing parallel programs

• Solves the same problem, and is better in some ways
Notice complementary approaches

• Given two approaches to a problem:

wherever one is used,
try the other one

• Example: static and dynamic analysis

• Static: sound, conservative
• Dynamic: precise, does not generalized
⇒ dynamic invariant detection

• Example: semantic vs. syntactic analysis

Combine existing techniques
• Apply one after the other
• Create a hybrid analysis
Cross-fertilization
• Take an approach from one domain, and apply it to another
• Examples: Machine learning, statistics, biology, …
Fill in gaps
• Review your previous research
• Are there themes or commonalities?
• Find ways to fill in the gaps

• This is particularly useful for creating a PhD thesis out of a sequence

of successful projects.
Goal vs. technique
• A research project requires:
• A goal or problem
• A technical approach
• Advantages of starting with a goal
• More likely to find a technical approach
• More likely to be novel and relevant
• Advantages of starting with a technique
• Quick to complete: you probably already have it implemented
• Fits well with your other work
What is your secret weapon?
Use your unique set of skills and experiences

Why are you the right person to work on this?

• You have taken a particular combination of classes
• Example: Steve Jobs and calligraphy class
• You have a friend with a tool/technique/knowledge
• You thought of it first (new approach)
• You are willing to work harder
Passion for your work
• Your intellectual curiousity about a topic
is necessary but not sufficient.
• Necessary:
• Your love for the topic will affect your motivation (and possibly ability)
• It helps if the topic was your idea
• Not sufficient:
• It has to matter to other people as well
Generalizing
• How does this generalize? What are the broader implications?
Brainstorming exercise
• Think about problems that you encounter in day-to-day programming.