CACS FACULTY AND THEIR RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr. WILLIAM R. EDWARDS, JR.

wedwards@cacs.louisiana.edu

Associate Professor, Computer Science. B.A., Mathematics, Rice U., 1964; M.A., Mathematics, U. of Kansas, 1966; Ph.D., Computer Science, U. of Kansas, 1973.

Dr. Edwards' research interests are within the area of theory of computation, and more specifically, algebraic automata theory, graph theory, and the modeling and analysis of the information content and conceptual complexity of software and natural language. He has done research in automata theory, dealing with the structure of the input monoid of a finite state automaton revealed by homomorphisms and strongly connected subautomata. His continued work in abstract automata theory involves analyzing the ranges

and domain partitions of input functions of automata to further reveal their structure and information processing power. His principal interest is in the abstraction of the information content of software by its control flow and data dependency graphs, and by information theoretic models. These models are found to be relevant to the understanding and testing of software, and to port concepts readily transferable between different programming environments, for example, from procedural to rule-based languages.

A stack-based probabilistic model has been developed for the generation and analysis of software.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Dr. Edwards is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery; the IEEE Computer Society, and the Mathematical Association of America, and has served as a referee for various IEEE journals and professional conferences.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Sherri Condon, Clauge G. Cech, and William R. Edwards, "Measuring Conformity to Discourse Routines in Decision-Making Interactions," Proceedings, 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, College Park, Maryland, 21-26 June, 1999, pp. 238-245.
Tara Lenore Gilmore and William R. Edwards, Jr., "Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars, Stack-Based Markov Sources, and Probabilistic Pushdown Automata," Proceedings, Twenty-Seventh Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing (Congressus Numerantium 96), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 19-23, 1996, pp. 97-119.
Renee A. McCauley and William R. Edwards,"Analysis and Measurement Techniques for Logic Programs,'' Chapter 7 in Software Measurement, Austin Melton, editor, pp. 93-113. International Thomson Computer Press, 1995.
Cheng Tzu Wang and William R. Edwards,"Stack-Based Markov Model Analysis of Expressions and Data Dependencies in Programs,'' Proceedings, Sixteenth Minnowbrook Workshop on Software Engineering, July 25-29, 1994, pp. 58-79.
James A. Holland and William R. Edwards,"A Stack-Based Object Oriented Development Model,'' Proceedings, Fifteenth Minnowbrook Workshop on Software Engineering, July 13-16, 1993, pp. 86-109.
W.R. Edwards, J.A. Holland, C.T. Wang, and M.G. Yang,"Stack-Based Probabilistic Models for Generation of Nested Parentheses,'' Proceedings Twenty-Fourth Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing (Congressus Numerantium), Boca Raton, FL, February 22-26, 1993.
Micheal B. O'Neal and William R. Edwards, Jr.,"Complexity Measures for Rule Based Programs,'' IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 5, (October, 1994), pp. 669-680.
Bruce Greenblatt and William R. Edwards, Jr.,"Semigroup Automaton Structure by Homomorphism and Domain Partition,'' Discrete Applied Mathematics, 34 (1991), pp. 129-143; and in Topics in Discrete Mathematics, Volume 1: Combinatorics and Theoretical Computer Science, R. Simion, editor, North-Holland, 1992.

Last Modified: Oct. 28, 1999