Looking around this world, we see that a fledgling can fly faster and faster, a pupil can calculate quicker and quicker, and a graduate student can write papers better and better. But since the birth of computers, it has been the case that after the release of a software package, the one millionth run of the program is typically not a bit better than its first-time run. Do programs have to be this dumb? In this talk, I will discuss the barriers that cause such dumbness, our efforts in creating a more intelligent paradigm, and some open challenges that you may be able to help address.

Xipeng Shen is an associate professor at the Computer Science Department, North Carolina State University (NCSU). He is a receipt of NSF CAREER Award, DOE Early Career Award, and Google Faculty Research Award. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, and a senior member of IEEE. Prior to joining NC State in 2014, Shen was the Adina Allen Term Distinguished Associate Professor at The College of William and Mary. He had served as a consultant to Intel Labs and Cisco, and a Visiting Researcher at MIT and Microsoft Research. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Rochester in 2006.