REU Site: Secure Software Testing for Web and Mobile Applications: Research Experience for Undergraduates

University Of North Texas, Denton TX

Investigators

Abstract

Title: REU Site: Secure Software Testing for Web and Mobile Applications: Research Experience for Undergraduates This project establishes an REU Site on the topic of secure software testing for web and mobile applications, at the University of North Texas. The project's intellectual merits are that it exposes students to an intense research experience that focuses on software testing with an emphasis on techniques that may help to increase security and reliability of web and mobile applications. The project's broader significance and importance are that it trains three diverse cohorts of ten students each in summers 2015, 2016, and 2017 to provide them with a supportive environment and research experience that encourages them to pursue graduate studies in Computer Science. The students are better prepared to enter the graduate school pipeline as they gain an understanding of basic research skills. Students work in collaborative teams that explore research questions in areas such as test suite generation, test suite prioritization, test suite reduction, attack surface analysis, and sanitization validation techniques. Empirical studies examine the techniques in the context of web and mobile applications.