Dennis Jeffrey

I was born in May 1981 in Michigan (near Detroit). One of my memories from living there was that I used to hate it when snow got caught around my wrist underneath my mittens. That stuff's cold!

My family moved to Texas for a year, where I went to kindergarten. I got chicken pox that year; some other kids made fun of me, saying that I had "chicken fox". My dad told me he got annoyed when the teacher told him I didn't know how to pronounce certain words properly. Apparently the problem was that I was not speaking with a Texan accent.

My family then moved to Arizona, where I attended first grade all the way through the 2nd year of my PhD. I attended grades 1 through 11 in the Phoenix area in central Arizona, grade 12 (my senior year of high school) in Cottonwood, a relatively small town in northern Arizona, followed by 8 years of college in Tucson, a city in southern Arizona. So I generally consider Arizona to be my home, the place where I grew up.

I left my home and family for the first time when I moved to Riverside, California, half-way through my PhD. I had to do this, since my advisor transferred from the University of Arizona in Tucson, to the University of California, Riverside. Within the next couple of years, I earned a PhD, I found my lifelong partner, and I got a job at Google. To top it all off, I visited Disneyland 20+ times.

Now I work as a "Software Engineer in Test" at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. I'm planning to get married to my fiancee in July 2012. As I type this, it's currently April 2012. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited!

I have two younger siblings, a sister (3 years younger) and a brother (4 years younger). My sister is an elementary school teacher, which is the same profession that my Grandma used to have. My brother is a police officer, which is the same profession that my Grandpa used to have. I am the only rebel in my family, who has studied Computer Science and has moved out of Arizona.

My brother is married and my sister is currently engaged. My parents and siblings all live in Arizona, but I am also very close to my paternal grandparents, who live in Texas.

I am currently engaged to a woman I love very much. She is my miracle. I'm really looking forward to starting our own family together.

I was in school for a long time. A very long time. Even after I went to my high school graduation and they talked about how tough it was, congratulated us on such a momentous achievement, and then sent us out into the "real world" to live our own lives, I still ended up staying in school for another decade. I learned that the challenges of high school are nothing compared to the challenges of a PhD in Computer Science.

My scholastic journey started in preschool in Michigan, but I don't remember anything about that. It continued in kindergarten in Texas, where I remember very little, except for being made fun of for my "chicken fox", as well as my teacher's name, Ms. Good. First grade was in Carminati Elementary School in Tempe, Arizona, with Ms. True. My theory is that my kindergarten and first grade teachers (Good and True) cemented my sweet and innocent personality.

Second grade was at the same school with Ms. Benjamin. I was traumatized here when I got detention for the first time, because I had dropped my crayon and it rolled underneath my neighbor's desk, and I asked for it. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the teacher was angry at the time from a noisy classroom, and had said that any other spoken words would lead to detention, no matter what.

Due to a change in the school district's boundaries, 3rd grade through 6th grade took place in another school called Arredondo Elementary School. My teachers were, in order: Ms. Welch, Ms. Lyons, Mr. Ward, and Mr. Carpenter. 7th through 9th grade took place mostly at Mesa Junior High School (though my family moved around a lot during this time, and I temporarily went to a bunch of other middle schools too). 10th and 11th grade were at Mesa High School, and 12th grade was at Mingus Union High School in northern Arizona.

From 5th grade through 12th grade, I played the Alto Saxophone in band class. We mostly played music concerts and marched in town parades, but in 10th - 12th grade, I was also in marching band class, where we learned to put on shows and marched in formation on football fields. We performed at all home school football games, as well as a few away football games (taking place at another school than our own). It's been quite awhile since I last played my Saxophone, but I still consider it to be one of the coolest musical instruments in the galaxy (except for maybe wine glasses).

I've always loved playing video games since as long as I can remember. Additionally, when I was very young, I got a little bit of programming experience from an old Atari computer that my dad had. I used to manually type in and run BASIC programs that were listed in textbooks that my dad showed me. I remember typing in one program that was a simple text-based role-playing game, and then changing the names of the monsters in the game by modifying the source code. It was awesome! My childhood dream was to become a video game designer when I grew up. To that end, I took an elective class in high school about C++ programming, and found out that I loved it. When it was time to go to college, I searched for the major that had the most to do with computer programming that I could find. It turned out to be Computer Science. My fate was sealed.

Do you know how some people consider college to be the best time of their lives? I don't quite feel the same way. Let me tell you a little about my college experience. Late nights in the lab. Papers that were thrashed and rejected by reviewers. Uncertainty about where my career was headed. LaTeX craziness. You know how great poetry comes from strong emotions? If you want to be able to write poignant, heartfelt poetry from the deepest depths of your pitiful soul, then go to college and study for a Computer Science PhD.

Ok, I'm just exaggerating. A little. But college was a pretty tough experience.

I got my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2003, after 4 years of hard work. Then I had to figure out what to do next. I decided to continue on and pursue a Master's in Computer Science, because I had found a topic that interested me: Software Engineering, in particular, automated techniques for testing and debugging software. After 2 more years, I got my Master of Science in Computer Science in 2005. After I had made it that far, I was still interested in my work and I decided to finish what I had started. Under the direction of Dr. Neelam Gupta and Dr. Rajiv Gupta, I completed my PhD in Computer Science in 2009. If you are interested in automated techniques for software debugging, or if you just want to see what I worked on, feel free to check out my dissertation: Dynamic State Alternation Techniques for Automatically Locating Software Errors.

Some people have asked me whether the PhD was worth it. For me, the answer is a resounding yes. There are many things you learn going through a PhD, besides just what's in your dissertation. The life lessons I learned by going through the PhD experience are at least as important to me as the research work I did. I also can't forget that I met my fiancee while I was a PhD student, and I also earned a job at Google afterwards. I wouldn't trade my time in the PhD program for anything else.

In 2009, several months before I was scheduled to finish my PhD, I was contacted by a Google recruiter who asked me if I was interested in applying for a role called "Software Engineer in Test" (SET). I was initially hesitant about this particular role, since it had the word "Test" in the title (despite the fact that my whole research focus was on automated techniques for testing and debugging software!). I wanted to write code, and not only do testing. The recruiter explained that this role is the same as a regular software engineering role, except that the role of an SET is to develop tools and infrastructure that support a high-quality product (rather than developing the product itself). That sounded like it was right up my alley, so I went ahead and applied, got an offer, and accepted. I started work in November 2009 at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, and I've been enjoying it ever since.

I currently work on the Chrome and ChromeOS teams supporting test automation efforts (in particular, automated performance testing infrastructure). Because most of the codebase for Chrome and ChromeOS is external, most of what I work on is external as well. If you want some work to do, feel free to take up some of my issues on Chrome and ChromeOS! I'm kidding, of course. Probably.

I love cartoons, video games, and Disneyland. In general, I like all sorts of things that I used to like as a child, which most people tend to grow out of as they get older. The trouble with me is that I didn't grow out of them; I only came to appreciate them all the more as I got older. I could write a long time about why I like these things so much, but I'll save that for another time.

I can't leave, though, without first mentioning pizza. Yes, pizza is -- by far -- my favorite food. But I also think that pizza deserves to be listed as one of my interests, because pizza is just that awesome.