Alex David Groce's Home Page


"But that night, after the bonfire and the fireworks had faded, a wind grew and blew with gathering violence, blowing away the rain. And in the morning I found one of the laurelled posts torn off and lying at random on the rainy ground; while the other stood erect, green and glittering in the sun. I thought that the pagans would certainly have called it an omen; and it was one that strangely fitted my own sense of some great work half fulfilled and half frustrated. And I thought vaguely of that man in Virgil, who prayed that he might slay his foe and return to his country; and the gods heard half the prayer, and the other half was scattered to the winds. For I knew we were right to rejoice; since the tyrant was indeed slain and his tyranny fallen forever; but I know not when we shall find our way back to our own land."
- G. K. Chesterton


Rene Magritte: La condition humaine, 1935







My primary website (the one you are looking at may be out of date!) is at agroce.github.io.

I am accepting PhD students to my software testing research group at Northern Arizona University (for Spring 2019). Please send resumes and cover letters to Alex.Groce@nau.edu. IMPORTANT NOTE: please do not send unless you have significant research interest in software testing specifically (I don't want people who are simply looking for a place to do a PhD, I want students interested in and aware of the field: if you submit a "random" application, I will likely just ignore it). In particular, bring either experience in testing in industry (with knowledge of code coverage measurement) or background in software engineering or programming languages as an undergraduate (research experience, ideally). Funding is available for good candidates. Python skills and statistical savvy a plus.





Northern Arizona University Faculty Profile

Curriculum Vitae

Research

Publications


ACM SIGSOFT Passages Columns


NASA/JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software (LaRS)


Thesis [PDF]


Comments and questions to agroce@gmail.com.

Coda:


Interviewer: You've lived a fairly privileged life. Why such despair?
Walker Percy: Who says I despair? That is to say, I would reverse Kierkegaard's aphorism that the worst despair is that despair which is unconscious of itself as despair, and instead say that the best despair and the beginning of hope is to be conscious of despair in the very air we breathe, and to look around for something better. I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?