Philip K. McKinley Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Michigan State University Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Short Biography Curriculum Vitae (PDF) Contact Information

Research

• Enhancing the robustness, resiliency and security of autonomous vehicles. My current research combines a digital twin framework with adversarial search methods and rigorous software engineering techniques in order to reveal and mitigate "unlikely-but-possible" situations (a.k.a. corner cases) that might arise due to unwanted feature interactions, unanticipated environmental conditions, human error, and novel attack vectors. Our current experimental platform, shown below, is EvoRally, a 1:5-scale autonomous vehicle with a top speed of 60 mph.
  
  
  
  
• Relevant Topics: Evolutionary robotics, high-assurance software, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, digital twins, learning-enabled system components, software engineering, Robot Operating System (ROS), self-adaptive systems, autonomic computing, cyber-physical systems, assurance cases, artificial life.
• Publications from Research Projects:
     Publications from Research Projects (2011 - present)    (2007-2010)    (2001-2006)    (1987-2000)
     Harnessing Digital Evolution - 2008 IEEE Computer article on using artificial life to help construct robust software
     Composing Adaptive Software - 2004 IEEE Computer article on a taxonomy of adaptive software methods
• Current/Recent Research Projects:
     MAPE-SAC (AFRL): Uncertainty-Aware Certification of Assurance for Autonomous Systems
     X-PLORE (AFRL): Mitigating Uncertainty in High-Assurance Software Systems
     Evolution Park (NSF): An Evolutionary Robotics Habitat for the Study of Crawling, Swimming and Flying Creatures
     BEACON (NSF): An NSF Center for the Study of Evolution in Action
     TEAMS (NSF): Transplanting Artificial Life Behaviors to Mobile Robots
     Orchid (NSF): Harnessing Digital Evolution to Design High-Assurance Adaptive Systems
     AWARE (ARO): Adaptive Software Monitoring for Critical Infrastructure Protection
  
• Other Projects:
     RAPIDware (ONR): Adaptive Middleware for Heterogeneous Mobile Computing
     Meridian (NSF): Automated Development of Distributed Systems Software
     Earlier Research Projects
  
• Affiliations:
     Software Engineering and Network Systems (SENS) Laboratory
     BEACON Science and Technology Center
     Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Graduate Program
  

Teaching

• Teaching Statement
• CSE 422, Computer Networks, Spring 2021, Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2014, ...
• CSE 410, Operating Systems, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2016, ...
• CSE 910, Systems Foundations of Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things, Spring 2017
• CSE 812, Advanced Operating Systems, Spring 2013, Spring 2010
• CSE 912, Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems: Artificial Life Communities, Spring 2011
• CSE 910, Biologically-Inspired Design of Networks and Distributed Systems, Spring 2010

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