As software is integrated more frequently into every aspect of our lives, as its failure in operations causes increasingly devastating consequences, as schedules and budgets are continually reduced despite the need for high-quality reliable and secure software, it is critical to have cooperative research teamwork between academia and industry. The University of Texas at Dallas IUCRC site emphasizes technology development as well as transfer on software testing and quality assurance. It matches the mission of the Security and Software Engineering Research Center (S2ERC). Hence, there is strong synergy in having this site become one of the major university sites of S2ERC.
Faculty members of this site have extensive expertise and background in industry collaboration in software testing and verification; software fault localization and program repair; software reliability, metrics and risk analysis; programming languages; software security systems; and software and system safety. The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) is located in an area with many high-tech companies that provide excellent opportunities for conducting academic/industrial cooperative research. UTD has a strong Software Engineering program offering BS, MS, and PhD degrees. This student talent base is accessible for work on cooperative software engineering and security research projects that fall within the scope of this IUCRC site and S2ERC.
The addition of this site to S2ERC will broaden and improve the Center's research in two of the nation's most important disciplines: software engineering and security. Membership fees from new industry affiliates will increase the overall program income of S2ERC. With a larger pool of funding, the center will be able to attract more proposals in response to industry needs and develop advanced technology applications for dependable and secure software development at a reduced cost. This will not only attract additional companies to join, but also profoundly impact the nation's technological innovation and improve the country's economy.
This site will follow the same data management plan used by S2ERC. Each project will release its data to the public at the earliest reasonable time and the access to such data will be available for at least three years after conclusion of the project. A designated website (http://paris.utdallas.edu/stqa ) will be used for management and dissemination of all data generated by research projects sponsored via this site, whereas S2ERC has a more comprehensive repository that comprises projects within the center as well as those conducted at other sites.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
