Welcome from the Program Co-Chairs

issues. This year we have received a good number of submissions by authors from 31 countries to the research track. From a total of 162 submissions, the program committee selected 35 full papers and 28 short papers. The acceptance ratio of the full papers is 22%. These 35 full papers are presented in 12 presentation sessions on software testing, evolution studies, software design, verification and validation, practice studies, change analysis, dynamic analysis, metrics and measurement, defect analysis, static analysis, software process, and concept/traceability recovery, respectively. The 28 short papers are presented in both 2 presentation sessions and 1 poster session. The program also includes two keynotes given by distinguished researchers: Mary Jean Harrold and David M. Weiss. Each submitted paper to the research track was reviewed by at least three members of the program committee, which consists of 78 internationally recognized experts in software engineering and software maintenance. Some submissions also received review comments from external reviewers. The total number of reviews is 558, contributed by the 78 program committee members and 62 external reviewers. The reviewers of each paper discussed the paper electronically and made a recommendation to the program co-chairs. Based on the recommendation and the reviews, the program co-chairs made the final decision on paper acceptance. The program also includes several other tracks managed by their track chairs: industrial track (Hausi A. Mller and Carl Worms), doctoral symposium (Arie Van Deursen and Ahmed E. Hassan), and tool demo track (Mark Grechanik), providing us with 8 industrial papers, 6 doctoral symposium papers, and 7 tool demonstrations. There are also several co-located events: SCAM, WSE, VISSOFT, MESOA, and SOAT, in addition to a special 25 Years ICSM Panel that reflects on the history of our field. We would like to thank the organizers of these events for choosing to co-locate with ICSM this year. Finally we thank the track chairs, the track program committees, the organizing committee, and the steering committee for making ICSM 2009 possible. We especially thank General Chair Eleni Stroulia for her help, and proceedings chair Dirk Beyer for his hard work in creating these proceedings. We hope you will find the program stimulating and enjoy your stay in Edmonton!