REU Site: Science of Software

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project is for a new REU site at North Carolina State University. It is focused on training undergraduates in software engineering, particularly in skills related to data analytics. Data analytics has become increasingly important in how companies and researchers make decisions about improving the reliability and usability of software. The intention of the project is to give research exposure and training to a diverse group of undergraduate students. The project aims at building students' analytical skills as well as research skills with the goal of leading them toward a research career in future. The project will primarily recruit women and minorities through the STARs alliance and from non-PhD granting universities. The project covers various areas of software engineering including visualization and data manipulation in virtual reality, model-based reasoning, human aspects (e.g., eye tracking data), bug fixing, and software analytics which is a cross between software and data mining methods. The overall research theme will investigate how to take advantage of qualitative organizational knowledge which gives data its context and meaning integrated with quantitative data mining methods that support exploration of large and complex datasets. The project will encourage the students to disseminate their research findings through presentations as well as publishing in research venues.