T.H. Tse

T.H. Tse
MBE
Photo of T.H. Tse
OccupationHonorary Professor
Academic background
Alma materLondon School of Economics
Doctoral advisorFrank Land; Ian Angell
Academic work
DisciplineSoftware Engineering
InstitutionsThe University of Hong Kong
Websitewww.cs.hku.hk/~tse

T.H. Tse (Chinese: 謝俊謙) is a Hong Kong academic who is a professor and researcher in program testing and debugging. He is ranked internationally as the second most prolific author in metamorphic testing.[1] According to Bruel et al.,[2] "Research on integrated formal and informal techniques can trace its roots to the work of T.H. Tse in the mid-eighties." The application areas of his research include object-oriented software, services computing, pervasive computing, concurrent systems, imaging software, and numerical programs. In addition, he creates graphic designs for non-government organizations.[3]

Tse received the PhD from the London School of Economics in 1988 under the supervision of Frank Land and Ian Angell.[4] He was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford in 1990 and 1992. He is currently an honorary professor in computer science at The University of Hong Kong after retiring from his full professorship in 2014. He was decorated with an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.[5][6]: 87 

In 2013, an international event entitled "The Symposium on Engineering Test Harness" was held in Nanjing, China "in honor of the retirement of T.H. Tse".[7] The acronym of the symposium was "TSE-TH".

In 2017 to 2021, Tse served as the intermediary for the fundraising of $150 million for The University of Hong Kong to establish the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wings I and II in the Faculty of Engineering. [8][9][10]

In 2019, Tse and team applied metamorphic testing to verify the robustness of citation indexing services, including Scopus and Web of Science. The innovative method, known as "metamorphic robustness testing", revealed that the presence of simple hyphens in the titles of scholarly papers adversely affects citation counts and journal impact factors, regardless of the quality of the publications.[11][12] This "bizarre new finding",[13] as well as the refutation by Web of Science and the clarification by Tse, was reported in ScienceAlert,[13] Nature Index,[14] Communications of the ACM,[15] Psychology Today,[16] and The Australian.[17]

In 2021, Tse and team were selected as the Grand Champion of the Most Influential Paper Award[18] by the Journal of Systems and Software for their 2010 paper.[19] According to Google Scholar, the journal ranks no. 3 in h5-index among international publication venues in software systems.[20]

In 2024, Tse successfully nominated Tsong Yueh Chen of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia to receive the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award 2024 “for contributions to software testing through the invention and development of metamorphic testing”.[21][22] This award is presented to individual(s) who have made significant and lasting research contributions to the theory or practice of software engineering.[23] The awardees are invited to give a keynote presentation at the ICSE conference.[23] Past winners include Gail Murphy 2023, Lionel Briand 2022, Mark Harman 2019, Daniel Jackson 2017, Carlo Ghezzi 2015, Alexander Wolf 2014, David Notkin 2013, Lori Clarke 2012, David Garlan and Mary Shaw 2011, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides 2010, Axel van Lamsweerde 2008, Elaine J. Weyuker 2007, David Harel 2006, Nancy Leveson 2004, Leon J. Osterweil 2003, Gerard Holzmann 2002, Michael Jackson 2001, Victor Basili 2000, Harlan Mills 1999, Niklaus Wirth 1999, David Parnas 1998, and Barry Boehm 1997.[23]

In July 2024, Tse was Selected as Featured Reviewer of the Month by ACM Computing Reviews.[24]

Handbook of Software Fault Localization: Foundations and Advances, Wiley-IEEE Press (2023). Credit: Cover Design by T.H. Tse.
  1. ^ S. Segura, G. Fraser, A.B. Sanchez, and A. Ruiz-Cortés, "A survey on metamorphic testing", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 42 (9): 805-824 (2016). doi:https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2016.2532875.
  2. ^ J.-M. Bruel; B.H.C. Cheng; S. Easterbrook; R.B. France; B. Rumpe (1998). "Integrating formal and informal specification techniques: Why? How?" (PDF). Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Industrial Strength Formal Specification Techniques. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society. pp. 50–57. doi:10.1109/WIFT.1998.766297.
  3. ^ "Graphic designs by Prof. T.H. Tse". The University of Hong Kong. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  4. ^ T.H. Tse (1988). Towards a unifying framework for structured systems development models (PhD). London School of Economics.
  5. ^ "Professor T.H. Tse". The University of Hong Kong. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  6. ^ "Board and Committees" (PDF), Annual Report 2015/2016, The Community Chest of Hong Kong, 2016, retrieved 9 February 2021
  7. ^ "The Symposium on Engineering Test Harness". Google Sites. 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
  8. ^ "Deep roots for innovation: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing looks to the future". Convocation Newsletter. Summer 2018. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  9. ^ "Opening of Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing at HKU: A makerspace connecting cross-disciplinary students with innovative ideas and advanced technology". The University of Hong Kong. 1 December 2020. Retrieved 19 February 2023. As part of the HK$140 million donation, HK$100 million is for setting up the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing, and $20 million was also donated to set up the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two and another HK$20 million for the establishment of the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Fund ...
  10. ^ "Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two". Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong. 28 December 2021. Retrieved 27 August 2024. The Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two (Innovation Wing Two) was established with a donation of HK$20 million from Mr and Mrs Tam Wing Fan ..., and a HK$10 million funding under the Government Research Matching Grant Scheme to match with the donation amount ...
  11. ^ Z.Q. Zhou; T.H. Tse; M. Witheridge (2021). "Metamorphic robustness testing: Exposing hidden defects in citation statistics and journal impact factors". IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 47 (6): 1164–1183. doi:10.1109/TSE.2019.2915065.
  12. ^ Z.Q. Zhou; T.H. Tse; M. Witheridge (2020). "An extended abstract of 'Metamorphic robustness testing: Exposing hidden defects in citation statistics and journal impact factors' ". IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE '20).
  13. ^ a b Dockrill, Peter (9 June 2019). "Study claims one punctuation mark has been skewing our scientific ranking system". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  14. ^ Crew, Bec (7 August 2019). "Studies suggest 5 ways to increase citation counts". Nature Index. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  15. ^ "A single punctuation mark has been skewing our entire system of scientific ranking". Communications of the ACM. 10 June 2019. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  16. ^ Bergland, Christopher (3 June 2019). "One small hyphen in a title could diminish academic success". Psychology Today. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  17. ^ "Hyphens mess with research citations: Study". The Australian. 5 June 2019. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  18. ^ "Journal of Systems and Software: Grand Champion of Most Influential Paper Award". YouTube. Retrieved 16 July 2021.
  19. ^ T.Y. Chen; F.-C. Kuo; R.G. Merkel; T.H. Tse (2010). "Adaptive random testing: The ART of test case diversity". Journal of Systems and Software. 83 (1): 60–66. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2009.02.022. hdl:10722/89054.
  20. ^ "Top Publications: Software Systems". Google Scholar. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  21. ^ David Lo (SIGSOFT Awards Chair); Thomas Zimmermann (SIGSOFT Chair) (17 January 2024). "SIGSOFT Awards 2024". ACM SIGSOFT Blog. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
  22. ^ "Staff achievement". Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
  23. ^ a b c "Outstanding Research Award". SIGSOFT. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
  24. ^ "TH Tse". Featured Reviewer: Current Profile. ACM Computing Reviews. July 2024.