Grants
Software Traceability Research Instrument
Jane Huang and Ed Keenan
Funded by the National Science Foundation:
Researchers at DePaul University have been awarded a $2,000,000 Major Research Instrumentation grant by the National Science Foundation to develop a software traceability instrument. The new instrument will support a critical research agenda of the software engineering community, and also facilitate technology transfer of traceability solutions to industry. DePaul researchers include Jane Cleland-Huang and Ed Keenan. External collaborators are from the University of Kentucky, the College of William and Mary, Kent State University, and Siemens Corporate Research. The project, awarded in May, 2010, will run for 3 years and will provide fulltime positions for a Software Architect, a Software Engineer, a post-doctoral researcher, and a PhD student, as well as numerous shorter-term student positions.
Using Data Mining and Recommender Systems to Facilitate Large-Scale Requirements Processes
Jane Huang and Bamshad Mobasher
Funded by the National Science Foundation:
The $499,892 project, funded for three years beginning in September of 2009, investigates the application of data mining techniques and recommender systems technologies within the software engineering process. This research represents a synergy between Dr. Mobasher's work in Web mining and Dr. Cleland-Huang's work in Systems and Software Engineering. The research is intended to develop tools and algorithms that help automate requirement elicitation and management processes in large projects. This is a timely project designed to address the needs of an increasing number of organizations who adopt collaborative tools such as wikis and forums to gather and manage requirements. The proposed research is expected to deliver a robust library of algorithms and tools to augment the functionality of wikis, forums, and other specialized management tools used in the requirements domain.
Online Learning Communities
Nichole Pinkard
Funded by the MacArthur Foundation:
The $475,000 grant, awarded in December 2009, supports the implementation of a learning network for Chicago youth, linking city schools, libraries, museums, afterschool programs, and online communities. Youth are developing digital media skills and seeking opportunities to use them, and Chicago institutions and organizations are looking for ways to make use of digital media in their work. However, an organized infrastructure that provides access to information, people, opportunities, and resources related to digital media is lacking in Chicago. Through this grant, an infrastructure will be put into place that launches a network for community-serving organizations, digital media professionals, and students, as well as creates an online professional development program for teachers involving new media. In addition, a steering committee will be formed to oversee the process, consisting of leaders of community-serving institutions in the private sector, K-12, and post-secondary institutions.
Funded by the MacArthur Foundation:
The three-year, $1,800,000 grant, awarded in June 2010, supports the implementation of the Chicago Learning Network linking schools, libraries, museums, afterschool programs, and online communities. Continues the work of original grant above.
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
The $2,600,000 grant over 2.5 years, awarded in June 2010, supports the development of a social-network mediated learning model that spans the spaces where youth spend their time: home, school, after school, in the community, and online. The goals of the efforts are developing youth’s academic tenacity and college knowledge while improving their content knowledge, as defined by the literacy common core standards.
Funded by Chicago Public Schools:
The $103,000 grant awarded in July 2010 provides a professional development program in digital media for Chicago Public Schools teachers. The program will cover an in-depth introduction to the concepts of teaching in a 21st century learning environment and will provide teachers with an active and supportive learning environment that models the classrooms they will be expected to lead.
Funded by the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) subcontract through the Local Initiatives Support Corporation:
The two-year, $640,000 grant will help develop the Smart Communities Program and will involve placing into designated schools a number of trained mentors from Digital Youth Network, the program founded by Dr. Pinkard. Digital Youth Network (DYN) has developed in-school Media Arts classes, afterschool learning pods, and an online social learning network to develop young people’s digital media skills and provide increased learning opportunities for underserved urban youth.
Funded by the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) subcontract through the Chicago Public Library:
The two-year, $374,592 grant was awarded in June 2010 to provide Digital Youth Network services at several Chicago Public Library branches.
Atlantis Collaborative Team Interaction Virtual Environment
Danny Mittleman
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education – Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education:
The $76,000 two year project, beginning in September of 2009 will support the sharing of domain specific lessons learned and best practices across Atlantis academic consortia that offer dual degree education programs. Apart from the Atlantis Conference, currently no program or process exists to capture lessons learned or evolved best practices of trans-Atlantic academic consortia. To encourage collaboration and knowledge exchange we will analyze existing virtual collaboration requirements, specify and develop an online community platform, and deploy that system to test the specifications and design solution. As Atlantis domain specific academic communities are composed of overlapping national, professional and organizational cultures, the project will address the communication gaps inherent in these communities that can become barriers to sharing and platform use. We will not just promote and encourage use of the platform, but will support the community to become a self-sustaining system, from a technology use perspective, from a knowledge sharing perspective, and from a cross cultural perspective.
Language Based Accountability
James Reilly, Corin Pitcher, and Radha Jagadeesan
Funded by the National Science Foundation:
The $499,970 project was funded for three years beginning in September of 2009. A computer used to be an isolated object, and you’d have one person in charge of it. If something went wrong, you knew whom to blame. Now, the software on a computer comes from multiple mutually distrusting parties, and we have to come up with mechanisms that allow them to interact without compromising their individual security goals. Accountability is the idea of making sure that a system’s users are adhering to its rules by having tracking who does what. One can draw a crude analogy to a traffic light on a roadway. Nothing prevents one from going through it, but one might get a ticket if one does get caught. This project will address the challenge of determining information that a system needs to store to ensure accountability, even while trying to minimize the information so stored so that the system doesn’t get clogged with every detail of every interaction.
Stateful Interfaces
James Reilly, Corin Pitcher, and Radha Jagadeesan
Funded by the National Science Foundation:
The $499,520 project was funded for three years beginning in September of 2009. This project aims to develop better tools for programmers working with complex multiprocessor computers. Realizing the performance promise of multi-core computers requires multi-threaded software that can use the available resources effectively. The trouble is that such software is notoriously difficult to write, resulting in errors that are easy for programmers to miss. The aim of stateful interfaces is to allow components of a program to be specified accurately. This is intended to permit more flexible composition of components in the construction of software, thus contributing to the overall goal of making it easier to write reliable software for multi-core systems.