Suman Roy, Janardan Misra, and Indranil Saha. A Simplification of a Real‐time Verification Problem. Software: Testing Verification and Reliability, Vol 26, pp. 548–571, Wiley, Dec 2016. Link , earlier version @ arXiv

In-brief: We revisit the problem of real‐time verification with dense‐time dynamics using timeout and calendar‐based models and simplify this to a finite state verification problem through a process of digitization and finitary reduction. Proposed technique enables verification of safety invariants, timeliness, and liveness properties for real‐time systems using finite state model checking avoiding the complexity of infinite state (bounded) model checking and scale up models without applying techniques from induction‐based proof methodology.

Janardan Misra "Terminological Inconsistency Analysis of Natural Language Requirements". Information and Software Technology (IST), Vol. 74, pp. 183 - 193, Elsevier, June 2016. Link

In-brief: In this paper, we consider special class of terminological inconsistencies arising from term-aliasing, wherein multiple terms spread across a corpus of plain-text requirements may be referring to the same concept. Identification of such alias entity-terms has been a difficult problem for manual analysis and this work propose multitude of techniques to identify and resolve cases of syntactic as well as semantic term-aliasing.

Janardan Misra and Suman Roy "A Decidable Timeout based Extension of LTL". Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics (JANCL), Vol. 24, Issue 3, pp. 262 - 291, Taylor & Francis, Nov 2014. Full Text

In-brief: We develop a timeout extension of propositional linear temporal logic (referred as ToLTL) to specify safety-critical properties of timeout-based models of real-time systems. Timeout tableau is designed for satisfiability checking of the ToLTL formulas and we prove that it remains PSPACE-complete. Under discrete time semantics, with bounded timeout increments, the model-checking problem w.r.t. a timeout Kripke structure is also shown to be PSPACE complete. We further prove that ToLTL, when interpreted over discrete time, can be embedded in the monadic second order logic, however, when interpreted over dense time without non-zenoness, it becomes $\Sigma_1^1$-complete (i.e., highly undecidable).

Janardan Misra. "A Calculus of Incomplete Fusions". The Computer Journal, Vol. 57(7), pp. 1105 - 1116, Oxford University Press, July 2014. Full Text (Link)

In-brief: In this paper, we extend Fusion Calculus (FC) to deal with possible effects of non-Byzantine errors in name fusions using meta-names, probabilistic variant of matching conditions, and operational semantics on probabilistic matching graph. A variant of bisimulation is defined and shown to be a congruence. We further enrich the existing axiomatic system of FC to provide algebraic laws to decide equivalence between processes in presence of errors. The enriched axiomatization is proved to be both sound and complete for finite processes.

Janardan Misra and Indranil Saha. "Artificial Neural Networks in Hardware: A Survey of Two Decades of Progress". Elsevier journal Neurocomputing, Vol. 74, pp. 239 - 255, 2010. Full Text (Link)

In-brief: This article presents a comprehensive overview of the hardware realizations of artificial neural network (ANN) models appearing in academic studies as prototypes as well as in commercial use. We study the overall progress in the field across all major ANN models, hardware design approaches, and applications. We outline underlying design approaches for mapping an ANN model onto a compact, reliable, and energy efficient hardware entailing computation and communication and survey a wide range of illustrative examples.

Subhas Kumar Ghosh and Janardan Misra. “A Randomized Algorithm for 3-SAT”. Springer journal Mathematics in Computer Science, special issue “Advances in Combinatorial Algorithms II”, Birkhauser Base/Springer, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 421-431, 2010. Link (earlier version @ arXiv)

In-brief: In this work we propose and analyze a simple randomized algorithm to find a satisfiable assignment for a Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form (CNF) having at most 3 literals in every clause.

Gabriel Ciobanu and Janardan Misra. “Performance Analysis and Name Passing Errors in Probabilistic Fusion”. Scientific Annals of Computer Science, “A.I. Cuza'' University Press, Vol. XVI, pp. 57-76, 2005. Link (Slides)

In-brief: Fusion calculus is introduced by Parrow and Victor as a calculus of concurrency. In this paper, we consider probabilistic extensions to fusion calculus in two different directions. First kind of extension is along the lines of classical action timing based stochastic process algebra, whereas second kind of extension is a novel approach dealing with possible incomplete effects of fusion actions. We propose syntactical and semantical extensions in each case and propose probabilistic fusion as a measure of reliability in network security.

Janardan Misra and Vikrant Kaulgud. "When to Build Quantum Software?" Presented in Software Engineering Research in India (SERI) 2021.

In-brief: Despite ongoing advancements in quantum computing, businesses are still faced with the problem to decide if they would benefit from investing into this novel technology for building a business-critical application. This uncertainty is not only owing to the limitations in the current state of the technology but also due to the gap between the level at which business applications are analyzed (e.g., using high level semi-formal languages) and the level at which quantum computing related information is currently available (e.g., formally specified computational problems, their algorithmic solutions with computational complexity theoretic analysis) to make informed decisions. To fill the discourse gap, this paper presents design of an interactive advisor, which augments users while deciding to invest into quantum software development as a plausible future option in their application context.

Janardan Misra and Nisha R. "Reliability Analysis of Machine Learning based Data-Driven Software". Tech Briefing Talk in the Innovation in Software Engineering Conference 2021 (ISEC'21)

Janardan Misra and Sanjay Podder. "Association of Defect Log Suitability for Machine Learning with Performance: An Experience Report". To appear in proceedings of the Innovation in Software Engineering Conference 2021 (ISEC'21), ACM.

Shalmoli Ghosh, Janardan Misra, Saptarshi Ghosh, and Sanjay Podder "Utilizing Social Media for Identifying Drug Addiction and Recovery Intervention". In proceedings of the International Workshop on Data Analytics for Smart Health (DASH 2020: IEEE BigData).

Janardan Misra and Sanjay Podder. "Mining Text in Incident Repositories: Experiences and Perspectives on Adopting Machine Learning Solutions in Practice". In proceedings of the SEI'19 (First International Workshop on Software Engineering Intelligence - co-located with ASE'19), San Diego, CA, USA, Nov 2019.

(Invited Talk) Social Media Analytics for Mental Health: Opportunities and Challenges. Sixth Social Networking Workshop @ COMSNETS 2019. Link

(Invited Talk) Future of AI Enterprise. Agile and Automation Conclave 2018 at SolutionsIQ. Slides

Janardan Misra, Divya Rawat, and Sanjay Podder. "Designing Data-Driven Solutions for Societal Problems: Challenges and Approaches". In proceedings of the ECML PKDD 2018 Workshops, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11329, pp. 134-144, Springer, Dublin, Ireland. Link

In-brief: Societal problems tend to be inherently complex, affect bottom of the socio-economic pyramid, and have wider spread across populations and geographies with resource constraints. In this paper we highlight challenges while designing machine learning based data-driven applications for addressing societal problems and make recommendations to deal with those challenges.

Janardan Misra, et. al. Data-Driven Application Maintenance: Experience from the Trenches. In proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice (SER&IP), IEEE Press, USA, pp. 48-54, May, 2017. Link (arXiv)

In-brief: In this paper we present our experience during design, development, and pilot deployments of a data-driven machine learning based application maintenance solution. We consider spectrum of interrelated problems encountered in application maintenance projects including duplicate incident identification, assignee recommendation, theme mining, and mapping of incidents to business processes.

Sanjay Podder, Janardan Misra, et al. "Designing Intelligent Automation based Solutions for Complex Social Problems". Presented in ICML 2016 workshop #Data4Good (Machine Learning in Social Good Applications), New York City, USA. Link (Full Text)

In-brief: Deciding effective and timely preventive measures to address societal problems is a difficult challenge. In this paper we propose design principles to guide development of data-driven applications for social good. Design Principles cover challenges which may be encountered during various phases of design and deployment life-cycles of the applications aimed for social good and make recommendations with respect to currently known state-of-the-art concepts, tools, and techniques to address these challenges.

Janardan Misra, Shubhashis Sengupta, and Sanjay Podder. "Topic Cohesion Preserving Requirements Clustering". In proceedings of RAISE 2016 (5th International Workshop on Realizing Artificial Intelligence Synergies in Software Engineering), ACM, pages 22-28, 17th May 2016, Austin, TX, USA. Link (companion draft @ arXiv)

In-brief: This paper focuses on the problem of generating human interpretable clusters of semantically related plain-text requirements. Presented approach applies techniques from information retrieval, natural language processing, network analysis, and machine learning for identifying semantically central terms as themes and clustering requirements into semantically coherent groups around these themes.

Pradeep Kumar and Janardan Misra. "Owners as Trusters: Trusted Ownership Declassification With Neighbourhood". In proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Aliasing, Capabilities and Ownership (IWACO '14), in association with the ECOOP 2014, Uppsala, Sweden, July 2014. Full Text

In-brief: Ownership types impose information hiding by statically restricting an owned object from becoming accessible outside the ownership boundary. In this paper, we propose a type system for trusted object-level access control, wherein, information can be made visible dynamically through explicit declassification, thus, decoupling accessibility and visibility from the ownership.

Amitabh Saxena, Janardan Misra, and Aritra Dhar. "Increasing Anonymity in Bitcoin". In proceedings of the BITCOIN 2014:1st International Workshop on Bitcoin Research, LNCS 8438, pp. 122 - 139, Springer, Mar 2014. Full Text

In-brief: Bitcoin prevents double-spending using the blockchain, however, true anonymity is not present in the bitcoin. This paper presents a method to enhance anonymity in bitcoin-type cryptocurrencies using composite signatures based on the hardness of the Computation Diffie-Hellman assumption in bilinear maps.

Janardan Misra, Shubhashis Sengupta, and Subhabrata Das. "Latent Semantic Centrality based Automated Requirements Prioritization". In proceedings of the 7th India Software Engineering Conference (ISEC '14), ACM, pp. 5:1 - 5:10, 2014. Link

In-brief: This paper focuses on the problem of automated prioritization of requirements specified in the plain text. Proposed method includes estimating latent semantic cohesion among the requirements as well as specific information contained within requirements. Using these estimates, latent semantic centrality and relative information specificity scores are derived, which form the basis for assigning relative priorities to the requirements as well as their semantically coherent clusters.

Janardan Misra and Subhabrata Das. "Entity Disambiguation in Natural Language Text Requirements". In proceedings of the 20th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC '13), IEEE, pp. 239-246, 2013. *Best Paper Award*. Link

In-brief: In this paper, we consider the problem of terminological ambiguity in requirement specifications arising from term-aliasing, wherein multiple terms may be referring to the same entity in a corpus of natural language text requirements.

Janardan Misra. “Observing Evolution in Artificial Life Studies: Algorithmic Considerations”. Accepted in the 2013 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life (IEEE-Alife '13), 2013. Link

In-brief: An observation process is a fundamental implicit component of the simulation based studies on artificial evolutionary systems (AES) by which time-varying entities are identified and their behavior is observed to uncover higher-level ``emergent" phenomena. In this paper, we analyze computational feasibility of programming an observation process for an automated discovery of evolutionary processes in arbitrary AES models.

Janardan Misra, KM Annervaz, Vikrant Kaulgud, Shubhashis Sengupta, and Gary Titus. "Software Clustering: Unifying Syntactic and Semantic Features". In proceedings of the 19th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE '12), IEEE, pp. 113-122, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Oct, 2012. Link

In-brief: In this paper we propose an approach to combine heterogeneous feature types with automated weighing to enhance information quality and reduce noise while extracting high level component architecture from the underlying source code. Weighted graph partitioning with a multi-objective global modularity criterion is used to select the clusters as architectural components with automated labeling and inter-component interactions. We further discuss how the suggested approach extends to clustering at multiple hierarchical levels, to application portfolios, and even for improving precision for the feature location problem.

KM Annervaz, Vikrant Kaulgud, Janardan Misra, Shubhashis Sengupta, Gary Titus, and A. Munshi. "Code Clustering Workbench". In proceedings of the SCAM '13, IEEE, pp. 31-36, 2013. Link

In-brief: In this paper, we present a configurable source code clustering workbench that allows users to select source code features, clustering algorithms and their parameters, and compare their outputs based on different combinations of these code-features and algorithms. The tool hides algorithm complexity from the users and thus enables them to focus on analysing the 'effect' of the configuration choices to make optimum choice.

Vikrant Kaulgud, KM Annervaz, Janardan Misra, and Gary Titus. "Comprehension Support During Knowledge Transitions: Learning from the Field". In proceedings of ICPC '14, ACM, pp. 205 - 206, 2014. Link

In-brief: Knowledge Transition (KT) of legacy applications is a critical activity, often determining the quality of maintenance in the early stages of a maintenance life-cycle. In this talk, we report our learning from real-life deployment case-studies of an integrated reverse engineering tool-suite that bootstraps the KT process by providing knowledge recipients insights to application structure, quality, and functionality.

Janardan Misra. “A Framework for Specification and Verification of Timeout Models of Real-Time Systems". In proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Computing (IC3-2011), S. Aluru et al. (Eds.): CCIS, Vol. 168, pp. 146 - 157. Springer, Heidelberg, 2011. Link

In-brief: Timeout based models are an important class of design models for discrete event modeling and simulation of real-time systems and protocols. In this work, we define a framework to graphically represent timeout based models with synchronous communication. The formalism offers system designers an expressive graphical language with well defined semantics to model their system designs and reason about their behavior.

Janardan Misra. "Algorithmic Feasibility of Entity Recognition in Artificial Life". In proceedings of the 10^th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL '11), G. Kampis, I. Karsai, E. Szatmary (Eds.), Part II, LNCS Vol. 5778, pp. 246 - 253, Springer, Heidelberg, 2011. Link

In-brief: Building upon the axiomatic framework of Henz&Misra, we analyze computational complexity bounds for the algorithmic implementation of an observation process for an automated discovery of the life-like entities in arbitrary ALife models. Among other results of such analysis is the conclusion that the problem of entity recognition in a simulation using syntactic constraints is a NP-hard.

Janardan Misra. "Algorithmic Feasibility of Observing Artificial Life Evolution". In proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (Alife XII), MIT Press, pp. 889 - 896, Odense, Denmark, 2010. Link

In-brief: In this paper, we analyze algorithmic feasibility of implementation of an observation process and consequent automated discovery of entities and the evolutionary processes in arbitrary artificial life models. We characterize bounds for the worst case computational complexity for the process of discovery of possible presence of entity and population level reproduction with epigenetic development togeterwith mutations and heredity in presence of natural selection.

Janardan Misra and Indranil Saha. "A Reinforcement Model for Collaborative Security and Its Formal Analysis". In proceedings of the New Security Paradigm Workshop (NSPW '09), pp. 101-114, ACM, 2009. Full Text

In-brief: This paper presents a principled approach to one of the many little studied aspects of enterprise security which relate to human behavior. We propose a payoff model for enabling collaborative monitoring of policy violations and define probabilistic robustness property of the resulting system and constraints for economic feasibility of the payoffs. For estimating model parameters , system and user behaviors are modeled in terms of probabilistic finite state machines (PFSM) and likelihood of the success of the model is specified using Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL). PRISM model checker based automated quantitative analysis elicits the process of the estimation of various parameters in the model using PFSMs and PCTL formulas.

Indranil Saha, Janardan Misra, and Suman Roy. “Timeout and Calendar based Finite State Modeling and Verification of Real-Time Systems”. In proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA '07), LNCS, Vol. 4762, pp. 284-299, Springer, 2007. Full Text

In-brief: In this work, we propose a canonical finitary reduction technique, which reduces the infinite state space of timeout and calender based transition systems to a finite state space. The technique is formalized in terms of clockless finite state timeout and calendar based models represented as predicate transition diagrams. Using the proposed reduction, we can verify these systems using finite state model checkers and thus can avoid the complexity of induction based proof methodology.

Martin Henz and Janardan Misra. “Towards a Framework for Observing Artificial Life Forms”. In proceedings of the 1st IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life (IEEE-ALife '07), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, pp. 23-30, DOI: 11.1109/ALIFE.2007.367654, 2007. Extended version @ arXiv

In-brief: Evolutionary processes have emerged as the defining feature of “life” in Artificial Life (Alife). When studying the behavior of a particular Alife form, the question naturally arises, whether a particular run of an Alife experiment exhibits evolutionary behavior or not. This paper presents a formal framework for answering this question based upon the notion of observations made in the Alife model at hand. Starting with defining entities and their relationships observed during the runs, the framework prescribes a series of decisions that the observer of the Alife form needs to make, followed by conditions that must be met in order to establish evolutionary behavior in particular runs.

Janardan Misra. “An Inductive Formalization of Self Reproduction in Dynamical Hierarchies”. In proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALIFE X), pp. 553 - 558, MIT Press, 2006. arXiv

In-brief: Formalizing self reproduction in dynamical hierarchies is one of the important problems in Artificial Life (Alife) studies. We study, in this paper, an inductively defined algebraic framework for self reproduction on higher order organizational levels for simulated Alife models and explore some existential results.

Janardan Misra. "Observing Artificial Life Evolution: A Formal Algebraic Framework". Master's Thesis, Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore, 2005. Link

In-brief: An observation process is a fundamental implicit component of the simulation based Artificial Life studies by which time-varying entities are identified and their behavior is observed to uncover higher-level ``emergent" phenomena. To study the observational process and to formally characterize it, we define a multi-set theoretic algebraic framework with constraints and mechanism for the algorithmic observability of various evolutionary processes including fecundity and natural selection under epigenetic developments, mutations, and heredity.

Rana Barua and Janardan Misra. “Binary Arithmetic for DNA Computers”. In Revised Papers from the 8th International Workshop on DNA Based Computers: DNA Computing (DNA8), Masami Hagiya and Azuma Ohuchi (Eds.), LNCS, Vol. 2568, pp. 124 - 132, Springer, UK, 2003. Full Text [Slides] (Link)

In-brief: We propose a (recursive) DNA algorithm for adding two binary numbers which require O(log n) bio-steps using only O(n) different types of DNA strands, where n is the size of the binary string representing the largest of the two numbers. The salient feature of our technique is that the input strands and the output strands have exactly the same structure which makes it fully procedural unlike most methods proposed so far. Logical operations of binary numbers can easily be performed by our method and hence can be used for cryptographic purpose.

(Book Chapter) Janardan Misra. "Towards a Framework for Collaborative Enterprise Security". In "Threats, Countermeasures, and Advances in Applied Information Security", IGI Global, Chap. 16, pp. 309-334, 2012. (Link)

In-brief: Role of human behavior in enterprise security is one of the little studied aspects. We propose a model of collaborative security employing basic concepts from Game theory, socio-psychology, and probabilistic model-checking. The proposed model aims towards solving the problem of inducing positive network effect to enable user centric monitoring of security violations. Correctness properties of the model are defined in terms of probabilistic robustness property and constraints for economic feasibility of the payoffs.

(Monograph) Janardan Misra. "Observing Artificial Life: An Abstract Algorithmic Framework". LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken, Germany, ISBN-13: 978-3-8454-1546-8, 2011. Link

In-brief: Establishing the presence of "life-like emergent phenomena" is a major goal of simulation based artificial life (ALife) studies. This book presents a formal approach to study observational processes by which time-varying entities are identified and their behaviour is observed to uncover higher-level emergent phenomena. Computational complexity theoretic analysis provides insights for an algorithmic realization of the presented framework for an automated discovery of life-like phenomena.

Janardan Misra. "A Recursive PLS (Partial Least Squares) based Approach for Enterprise Threat Management". arXiv

In-brief: In this paper we present a principled approach to study and model the human expertise in responding to the emergent threats from reported security events using recursive partial least squares based machine learning model. Presented model is theoretically optimal and operationally recursive in nature to deal with the security events being generated continuously. We discuss underlying challenges and ways in which the model could be operationalized in centralized versus decentralized, and real-time versus batch processing modes.

Janardan Misra. "A Note on Digitization of Real-Time Models and Logics". arXiv

In-brief: Digitization provides a sound and complete method to reduce the problem of verifying whether a real-time system satisfies a property under dense-time semantics to whether the same real-time system satisfies the property over discrete-time. This is a brief overview of digitization of real-time models and logics covering known results, value, limitations, and alternatives.

Janardan Misra, Vikrant Kaulgud, Gary Titus, Annervaz KM, Shubhashis Sengupta. "Java Source-code Clustering: Unifying Syntactic and Semantic Features." arXiv

In-brief: This is a companion draft to the paper 'Software Clustering: Unifying Syntactic and Semantic Features' (WCRE 2012). It discusses the clustering process in detail and also contains additional features in the context of applications with Java source-code.

Janardan Misra and Suman Roy. “Techniques for Distributed Reachability Analysis with Partial Order and Symmetry based Reductions”. arXiv

In-brief: In this work we propose techniques for efficient reachability analysis of explicitly enumerated state space using a combination of partial order and symmetry based reductions in a distributed setting. We consider variants for both depth-first as well as breadth-first based generation of the reduced state graphs on-the-fly.

Janardan Misra. “Thoughts on an Unified Framework for Artificial Chemistries”. arXiv.

In-brief: Artificial Chemistries (ACs) are symbolic chemical metaphors for the exploration on the problem of biogenesis or the origin of life. This paper presents outline of a unified framework to characterize ACs by formally specifying their semantic and organizational aspects by applying abstractions of information, computation, and communication. We study two important notions of information, namely, Shannon's Entropy and Algorithmic Information, and discuss inductive and deductive approaches for defining the framework.

Janardan Misra. “Design of a P System based Artificial Graph Chemistry”. arXiv

In-brief: In this work we define a P system based artificial graph chemistry to understand the principles leading to the evolution of life-like structures in an AC set up and to develop a unified framework to characterize and classify symbolic artificial chemistries by devising appropriate formalism to capture semantic and organizational information. An extension of P system is considered by associating probabilities with the rules providing the topological framework for the evolution of a labeled undirected graph based molecular reaction semantics.

Anjeline Daniel and Janardan Misra. “Understanding Suicides in India: a Socio-Cultural Perspective”. Accepted for presentation in the 2nd International Conference on Mental Health and Cultural Psychiatry, Sydney, Australia, Nov 2005.

C.P. Ravikumar, Janardan Mishra, Nirmalya Haldar, Kamal Kiran, and Senthil Arasu. "Static Verification of Burn-in Test Vectors". TI Test Symposium, 2002.