CSC News

Faculty Receive Research Supplements

Four NC State Department of Computer Science faculty members have received National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduate Students (REU) supplements to existing NSF projects.

REU supplements provide indirect funding for undergraduate students to actively participate in any area of research funded by the NSF.  REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program.  Those faculty receiving supplements are:

James Lester, associate professor of computer science at NC State University, has received $24,000 for his research:  "The Narrative Theater - A Creativity Enhancement Environment."  This brings the total NSF funding to date for this project to $804,868.

Research Abstract:  Multiple representations are central to the creative process.  The objective of the project is to design and empirically evaluate an interactive creativity environment that supports the automatic mapping of one representation to another that is fundamentally different but complementary.  In particular, the proposed work will focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Narrative Theatre, an interactive narrative-centered creativity environment.  Rigorous comparative studies using both quantitative and qualitative methods will explore the hypothesis that the multiple representations supported by the Narrative Theatre will significantly enhance the creative process in measurable ways.

For more information on Dr. Lester, click here.

George Rouskas, professor of computer science at NC State University, has received $16,000 for his research:  “CPATH CB:  Computing Across Curricula.”  This brings the total NSF funding to date for this project to $274,749.

Research Abstract: The focus of this project is to streamline pathways through which students receive an education that equips them with the computing tools necessary for them to serve as future computing leaders of society. To this end, we will assemble a community of individuals, each of whom is invested in their own unique way to revitalizing the undergraduate computing education. The community will involve faculty representatives from several academic departments and delegates from industry partner organizations, and will open up meaningful channels for dialogue to flow from industry to the university, leading to a more diverse, flexible workforce of computing professionals.

For more information on Dr. Rouskas, click here.

Laurie Williams, associate professor of computer science at NC State University, has received $7,875 for her research:  “CAREER:  The Test-Driven Development of Secure and Reliable Software Applications.”  This brings the total NSF funding to date for this project to $413,764.

Research Abstract: Our nation's critical infrastructure demands that our current and future IT professionals have the knowledge, tools, and techniques to produce reliable and trustworthy software. The objective of this research is to extend, validate, and disseminate a software development practice to aid in the prevention of computer-related disasters. The practice is based upon test-driven development (TDD), a software development technique with tight verification and validation feedback loops. The proposed work extends the TDD practice and provides a supportive open-source tool for explicitly situating security and reliability as primary attributes considered in these tight feedback loops.

For more information on Dr. Williams, click here.

Tao Xie, assistant professor of computer science at NC State University, has received two REU supplements:

•    $8,000 for his collaborative research:  “SoD-Team:  Designing Tests for Evolving Software Systems.”  This brings the total NSF funding to date for this project to $245,000.

Research Abstract: Existing techniques for the design of tests typically target at designing tests for testing the current version of a software system. Designing tests for evolving software has rarely been explored but is of great importance in advancing science of design. The goal of this research is to address the test-suite augmentation problem by defining novel techniques for: (1) determining whether an existing regression test suite adequately exercises the changes between two versions of a software product; and (2) providing automated support for designing and developing test cases that target the software changes not adequately exercised by the existing tests.

•    $8,000 for his collaborative research:  “CT-ISG:  Collaborative Research:  A New Approach to Testing and Verification of Security Policies.” This brings the total NSF funding to date for this project to $227,275.

Research Abstract:  Security policies such as access control and firewall policies are one of the most fundamental and widely used privacy and security mechanisms.  Assuring the correctness of security policies has been a critical and yet challenging task.  In this proposal, we propose to develop a uniform representation of security policies across application domains such as XACML access control policies and firewall policies, and a set of novel techniques for testing and verification of both the static and stateful policies based on the uniform representation.

For more information on Dr. Xie, click here.

~coates~