IEEE Day Celebration and IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Speaker: Do We Still Need Architects in the Age of AI?
Join us on October 14th as we celebrate IEEE Day and host a distinguished speaker from the IEEE Computer Society.
IEEE Day is an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of past volunteers and look ahead to the future of the IEEE. IEEE Day celebrates the first time in history when engineers worldwide gathered to share their technical ideas in 1884.
Distinguished Speaker: Dr. Rick Kazman. Dr. Kazman will present on how studies show that LLMs support divergent thinking and design documentation, while human expertise remains essential for meaningful architectural design. AI can enhance, but not replace, the role of architects.
This talk is part of her speaking tour across Western Canada, and the IEEE Vancouver Section, together with the Joint Computer Chapter, is delighted to host her in person at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), Richmond Campus. The presentation will begin at 5:15 PM.
The event is free for all attendees.
We will also celebrate IEEE Day with a cake-cutting ceremony. Appetizers will be served. Please note that registration is mandatory.
Date and Time
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- 8771 Lansdowne Rd
- Richmond , British Columbia
- Canada V6X 3V8
- Building: Main Building
- Room Number: TBA
- Starts 22 September 2025 07:00 PM UTC
- Ends 14 October 2025 07:00 AM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Dr. Rick Kazman of CH07047 - Vancouver Section Jt. Chapter, C16/CIS11
Do We Still Need Architects in the Age of AI?
In this talk I will begin by reviewing what it is that an architect does in practice. I then look at how AI can support and augment some of an architect's duties and knowledge. In particular I will describe two empirical studies on how LLMs can assist in the design process. The first study investigated the ability of LLMs to generate and select architectural design concepts. The second study explored an LLM-assisted architecture design process. The overall conclusion is that LLMs are not, by themselves, good architects. Human architects are still essential. But AI can help in some important ways. Human architects can leverage LLMs for tasks like divergent thinking, generating design options, and generating documentation, ultimately leading to a more effective and collaborative design process.
Biography:
Dr. Rick Kazman is the Danny and Elsa Lui Distinguished Professor of Information Technology Management at the University of Hawaii. His research interests are software architecture, design and analysis tools, and technical debt. Kazman has been involved in the creation of several influential methods and tools for architecture analysis, including the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method and the Titan and DV8 tools. He is the author of over 250 publications, co-author of three patents and nine books, including Software Architecture in Practice, Technical Debt: How to Find It and Fix It, Designing Software Architectures: A Practical Approach, and Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future. His methods and tools have been adopted by many Fortune 1000 companies and his work has been cited over 30,000 times, according to Google Scholar. He is currently a member of the IEEE Computer Society’s Board of Governors.
Kazman received a B.A. (English/Music) and M.Math (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo, an M.A. (English) from York University, and a Ph.D. (Computational Linguistics) from Carnegie Mellon University. How he ever became a researcher in software engineering is anybody’s guess. When not doing architecture things, Kazman may be found cycling, singing acapella music, gardening, or playing the piano.