Robert Dyer

About Robert Dyer

Assistant Professor
School of Computing
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln NE 68588 USA

Office: Avery 103E (currrently virtual)
Email:
Phone: 402-472-5082
Fax: 402-472-7767

I am currently hiring

If you are an undergrad student and you have interests in software engineering, programming languages, data mining, or big data -- please send me an email introduction including your CV and what kinds of research interests you.

Research Interests

My current research interests are in software engineering and programming languages. I am interested in improving upon or developing new programming models to maintain the benefits of software engineering practices such as separation of concerns, agile software development, etc.

Currently I am working on PAClab - a Program Analysis ColLABoratory.

I am a lead researcher and engineer for the Boa language and infrastructure. Boa is a virtual laboratory for data-intensive research on open-source software development. Boa provides better abstractions for easily and efficiently mining ultra-large-scale software repositories.

Previously I worked on the Ptolemy language. Ptolemy provides the benefits of separation of cross-cutting concerns while maintaining the separate type-checking, compilation, and reasoning properties of standard object-oriented languages. I helped develop the research compiler (based on the JastAdd compiler framework) as well as performed large-scale empirical studies on the language.

I have also worked on the Nu project, an aspect-oriented intermediate language. Nu adds two simple constructs to object-oriented programs and is capable of emulating most high-level constructs of languages like AspectJ, Eos, etc. This new model allows maintaining separation of cross-cutting concerns into the object code, potentially improving post-compilation processes such as incremental compilation, unit testing, debugging, tool support, etc.

Select Publications

  • NEW EMSE: Pitfalls and Guidelines for Using Time-Based Git Data
    Samuel W. Flint, Jigyasa Chauhan and Robert Dyer. Oct 01, 2022.
  • NEW ESEC/FSE 2022: An Exploratory Study on the Predominant Programming Paradigms in Python Code
    Robert Dyer and Jigyasa Chauhan. Nov 14, 2022.
  • Distinguished Paper Award MSR 2021: Escaping the Time Pit: Pitfalls and Guidelines for Using Time-Based Git Data
    Samuel W. Flint, Jigyasa Chauhan and Robert Dyer. May 17, 2021. [arXiv] [Zenodo]
  • ESEC/FSE’20: PAClab: a Program Analysis Collaboratory
    Rebecca Brunner, Maria Paquin, Robert Dyer and Elena Sherman. Nov 08, 2020. [PDF]
  • ESEC/FSE 2018 NIER: Software Engineering Collaboratories (SEClabs) and Collaboratories as a Service (CaaS)
    Elena Sherman and Robert Dyer. Nov 06, 2018. [ACM DL]
  • ICSE 2014: Mining Billions of AST Nodes to Study Actual and Potential Usage of Java Language Features
    Robert Dyer, Hridesh Rajan, Hoan Anh Nguyen and Tien N. Nguyen. Jun 03, 2014. [ACM DL] [slides]
  • Read more...

Funding

Teaching

Recent Professional Service