REU Site: Software Assurance and Security in Emerging Technologies: Research Experience for Undergraduates

该项目在北得克萨斯大学建立了一个本科生研究经验(REU)网站，主题是新兴技术中的软件保证和安全。拟议的REU网站将i)让本科生接触到安全和软件开发和测试方面的实践研究经验，ii)增强他们的研究经验，iii)促进他们对研究的兴趣，以及iv)培养他们攻读CS高级学位和职业的愿望。该项目旨在通过让学生接触到令人兴奋和可实现的研究目标，让他们有机会利用研究经验和出版物建立简历，并提供一个由同行和导师组成的支持性社区，鼓励他们取得成功，从而增加攻读研究生的人数。通过引入竞争和合作作为研究创新的驱动力，该项目旨在实现独特的、具有凝聚力的本科生研究体验，以吸引学生攻读研究生课程。学生将获得学习最先进技术知识的背景知识，独立思考的能力，以及解决具有挑战性的问题的信心。因此，他们将为进入研究生院做好更好的准备。该项目更广泛的意义和重要性在于，它培训了三个不同的群体，包括从少数族裔和代表性不足的群体中招募的十名学生，其中包括女学生。该项目的智力优势在于，它为学生提供了一种紧张的研究体验，将安全和软件开发和测试研究与新兴技术(即网络、移动和可穿戴应用程序)结合起来，作为评估不同研究技术的人工制品。这个REU网站的智力价值反映在每个单独的研究项目中，这些项目具有有趣和关键的应用，参与者很容易认同。有些项目是为才华横溢的学生设计的，旨在通过解决未解决的问题来增进知识和理解。其他人则寻求使用安全和测试技术来解决现实世界的问题。这些项目还将采用智力方法，通过积极学习、自由和开放的思想交流、团队精神以及对成就的认可和奖励来鼓励学生。具体地说，目标是培养一)创造性和独立的思维，二)解决问题的技能和实践经验，三)热情和自信，以及四)批判性思维、沟通和组织技能。学生项目的设计包括个人和协作任务，这些任务促进了与团队的紧密联系，并更好地了解了他们工作的更大背景。学生们在协作团队中探索研究问题和创新，这些领域包括消息完整性、针对不同资源受限设备的加密数据计算、测试套件优先级排序和测试套件缩减。学生将研究适用于移动和可穿戴环境的加密算法和协议，目标是实现端到端消息级别的完整性，并支持加密数据的计算。他们还将进行经验研究，假设测试用例集缩减的故障检测有效性，并通过基于覆盖的度量确定测试用例集的优先级。实证研究考察了新兴技术(网络、移动、可穿戴设备等)背景下的技术。

This project establishes a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at the University of North Texas on the topic of software assurance and security in emerging technologies. The proposed REU Site will i) expose undergraduate students to hands-on research experiences in security and software development and testing, ii) enhance their research experience, iii) promote their interests in research, and iv) seed their desire to pursue advanced degrees and careers in CS. The project aims to increase the number of students that pursue graduate studies by exposing students to exciting and attainable research goals, giving them the opportunity to build their resumes with research experiences and publications, and providing a supportive community of peers and mentors that encourage them to be successful. By introducing competition and collaboration as drivers for research innovation, the project intends to achieve a unique and cohesive undergraduate research experience that entices students to pursue graduate studies. Students will gain a background to learn state-of-the-art technical knowledge, the ability to think independently, and the confidence to work on challenging problems. As a result, they will be better prepared to enter the graduate school pipeline. The project's broader significance and importance are that it trains three diverse cohorts of ten students recruited from minorities and underrepresented groups including female students. The project's intellectual merits are that it exposes students to an intense research experience that combines security and software development and testing research with emerging technologies (i.e., web, mobile, and wearable applications) as artifacts used for evaluation of the different research techniques. The intellectual merit of this REU site is reflected in each individual research project, which has interesting and crucial applications that participants can easily identify with. Some projects, designed for highly talented students, seek to advance knowledge and understanding by addressing unsolved problems. Others seek to employ security and testing techniques to solve the real-world problems. The projects will also apply an intellectual approach to encourage students through active learning, free and open exchange of ideas, team spirit, and recognition and rewards for achievements. Specifically, the objectives are to foster i) creative and independent thinking, ii) problem-solving skills and hands-on experience, iii) enthusiasm and confidence, and iv) critical thinking, communication and organization skills. The student projects are designed to include individual and collaborative tasks that foster a strong connection to the group and a better understanding of the larger context of their work. Students work in collaborative teams that explore research questions and innovations in the areas of message integrity, computation on encrypted data for different resource-constrained devices, test suite prioritization, and test suite reduction. The students will investigate cryptographic algorithms and protocols that are suitable for mobile and wearable environments and aim to achieve end-to-end message level integrity and to support computing on encrypted data. They will also conduct empirical studies that hypothesize about the fault detection effectiveness of test suite reduction and test suite prioritization by coverage-based metrics. Empirical studies examine the techniques in the context of emerging technologies (web, mobile, wearable, etc.).