Professor receives grant for software architecture research

Using funding from the National Science Foundation, Roshanak Roshandel is trying to break new ground in software engineering research—with the help of four Seattle University students.

Roshandel, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering, was awarded $90,466 to fund a year-long research project in her field of software architecture.

Through her research Roshandel is developing new approaches to assess the reliability of related software products. Her main goal is to find new approaches to design reliable software product families—groups of software that are similar in some way—and how to assess the reliability of those families.

"All software should be designed to be high quality," Roshandel said. "This grant expands to thinking about a group of software and what similarities they share."

Roshandel selected two Masters of Software Engineering students—Loizos Markides and Zhen Yang—to be her research assistants. 
A third student—junior computer science major Lindsay Stetson—had previously taken a class instructed by Roshandel and approached her about research opportunities. Roshandel offered Stetson a spot on the team to help develop the software needed for the project. Roshandel then approached another former student of hers, junior computer science major Kyle Zielinski, to team up with Stetson.

The team spent months studying published research to learn more about the particular topic of software product families. After developing their project goal and refining research, they began to work on their first paper to be submitted for publication. The paper is currently under peer review by the International Conference on Quality of Software Architecture in the Czech Republic.

The paper focuses on "preliminary results" of their research. They teamed up with Chris Mattmann of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, based in Pasadena, Calif. With his help, they were able to use one of NASA's actual software product families to evaluate their research.

The project has afforded the students opportunities outside of the Seattle U community.

Stetson was recently given the chance to travel to San Jose, Calif. to attend the International Conference on Performance Engineering. 
Zielinski has received funding to travel to the conference in Czech Republic regardless of whether their paper is approved. He has also been able to experience hands-on work with NASA in the science sector of computer engineering, his particular field of interest.

"I want to find some real job, and this is real work," Yang said.

The research project has also helped the students develop better research techniques and dive more specifically into their fields of study.

"The skills I've developed in this project are much more applicable than what goes on in the classroom," Stetson said regarding her goal to earn a doctorate in computer science. "Beyond that [Roshandel] has been a mentor to us through everything."

Once the project is finished, Roshandel plans to apply for other funding opportunities that would allow her to pursue her long term goals of researching more extensively other factors that affect the reliability of software.

"Reliability is only one facet of dependability and quality," Zielinski said. "It's just what we're focusing on right now."

The students all hope to continue to be able to work with Roshandel next year should she receive additional funding.

"Research is never finished," Roshandel said. "There are always opportunities to expand."

Kat may be reached at acatlett@su-spectator.com.