Contact Information
140 Governors Drive
Amherst, MA 01003-9264
USA
Email: hconboy@cs.umass.edu
Office: 314 Computer Science Building
Teaching
- Spring 2025) COMPSCI 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Fall 2024) COMPSCI 320, Section 4: Introduction to Software Engineering, COMPSCI 429, Section 4: Software Engineering Project Management
- Spring 2024) COMPSCI 320, Section 3: Introduction to Software Engineering, COMPSCI 429, Section 3: Software Engineering Project Management
- Fall 2023) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Spring 2023) CS 320, Section 4: Introduction to Software Engineering, CS 429, Section 4: Software Engineering Project Management
- Spring 2023) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Fall 2022) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Spring 2022) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Fall 2021) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Spring 2021) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Fall 2020) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
- Spring 2020) CS 520: Theory and Practice of Software Engineering
Research
I work in the Laboratory for Software Engineering Research (LASER). My research interests are in the areas of requirements engineering, static analysis, and real-time monitoring/guidance.
The goal of my research is to investigate techniques to improve the quality of human-intensive processes (HIPs) (e.g., medical procedures) that involve coordination among human performers, software applications, and hardware devices. Since the HIPs are often complex involving aspects such as concurrency and exceptional situations, I have developed static analysis techniques that help prevent the HIPs from violating their overall system requirements and evaluated these techniques on case studies.
I contributed to the FLAVERS model checker that employs static data flow analysis techniques to verify whether or not all potential traces through a finite-state model of a system satisfy a given requirement of that system. If not, this model checker can generate a counterexample trace that illustrates a potential system requirement violation to help with program understanding and debugging.
Additionally, I investigated a static analysis approach to automatically derived requirements for components used in HIPs based on an interface synthesis method developed for software systems. The derived requirements are represented as finite state automata that prevent any sequences of procedure calls to a selected component that violate a given system requirement. The requirement derivation employs a learning algorithm to iteratively refine the automaton based on counterexamples traces generated by a model checker. Such requirements can be used to select the right process for a given component or alternatively to select the right component for a given process.
Checklists that guide the human performers though on-going processes have been applied in multiple domains and shown to reduce human errors. I am also contributing to a dynamic approach to generate context-sensitive Smart Checklists by matching validated HIP models against streams of real-world process activity events.
Publications
Selected Refereed Papers
- "Piloting an Interactive Ethics and Responsible Computing Learning Environment in Undergraduate CS Courses", Francisco Castro, Sahitya Raipura, Heather Conboy, Peter Haas, Leon Osterweil, Ivan Arroyo, In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2023), 2023, pp. 659-665.
- "A Coding Framework for Usability Evaluation of Digital Health Technologies", Mahdi Ebnali, Lauren Kennedy-Metz, Heather Conboy, Lori Clarke, Leon Osterweil, George Avrunin, Christian Miccile, Maria Archanskiy, Annette Phillips, Marco Zenati, Roger Dias, To appear in the 2022 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2022).
- "Process Driven Guidance for Complex Surgical Procedures", George S. Avrunin, Stefan C. Christov, Heather M. Conboy, Lori A. Clarke, Leon J. Osterweil, and Marco A. Zenati, American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium Proceedings (AMIA’18), 2018, pp. 175-184.
- "Toward Improving Surgical Outcomes by Incorporating Cognitive Load Measurement into Process-Driven Guidance", George S. Avrunin, Lori A. Clarke, Heather M. Conboy, Leon J. Osterweil, Roger D. Dias, Steven J. Yule, Julian M. Goldman, and Marco A. Zenati, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2018 Workshop on Software Engineering in Healthcare Systems (SEHS'18), 2018.
- "A Comprehensive Framework for Using Iterative Analysis to Improve Human-Intensive Process Security: An Election Example", Leon J. Osterweil, Matt Bishop, Heather M. Conboy, Huong Phan, Borislava I. Simidchieva, George S. Avrunin, Lori A. Clarke, and Sean Peissart, In ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS), 2017, pp. 5:1 - 5:31.
- "Smart Checklists to Improve Healthcare Outcomes", Stefan C. Christov, Heather M. Conboy, Nancy Famigletti, George S. Avrunin, Lori A. Clarke, and Leon J. Osterweil, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2016 Workshop on Software Engineering in Healthcare Systems (SEHS'16), 2016, pp. 54 - 57.
- "Insider Threat Identification by Process Analysis", Matt Bishop, Heather M. Conboy, Huong Phan, Borislava I. Simidchieva, George S. Avrunin, Lori A. Clarke, Leon J. Osterweil, and Sean Peisert, In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Research for Insider Threat (WRIT'14), 2014, pp. 251 - 264.
- "Process-Based Derivation of Requirements for Medical Devices", Heather M. Conboy, George S. Avrunin, and Lori A. Clarke, In Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium (IHI'10), 2010, pp. 656 - 665.
Invited Talks
- "A Model-based Approach to Iteratively Improve Human Intensive Processes", Heather M. Conboy, The Parker Lab, Virginia Tech, March 2022. (Virtual)
- "The Use of Process Modeling and Smart Checklists in Healthcare", Heather M. Conboy, BWH STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation Research Seminars, August 2020. (Virtual)
- "MAC (Memory and Aging Center) Process Modeling Project", Heather M. Conboy and Kate Rankin, MAC, University of California San Francisco, March 2014. (In person)
- "Building Finite State Verifier (FSV) Models from the Bandera Intermediate Representation (BIR)", Heather M. Conboy, George S. Avrunin, Lori A. Clarke, and Stephen F. Siegel, Laboratory for Specification, Analysis, and Transformation of Software, Kansas State University Manhattan, February 2002. (In person)
Software Tools and Benchmarks
- FLAVERS finite-state verification (FSV) tool
- Finite-state verification example repository for Ada
