IRES Track I: U.S.-Czech Student Research Experience on Software Test Automation and Quality Assurance

这个IRES项目将为六名美国本科生提供为期八周的暑期研究体验，为期三年，每年在捷克共和国的布尔诺。研究经验将使学生获得与大型企业使用的分布式软件系统的测试、质量保证和代码检查有关的新知识和技能。这些学生将由该领域的国际知名研究人员指导。学生们呢？测试和质量保证领域的项目将由捷克技术大学的研究人员和世界领先的开源企业软件解决方案提供商Red Hat的专家领导。学生研究和实验将在布拉格捷克技术大学的软件测试智能实验室和位于捷克共和国布尔诺的红帽研究设施进行。学生将获得测试开发周期、现代测试工具包、产品级开发和研究技能的完整知识。学生们将研究新的代码检测技术，进一步掌握该领域的知识，并提升美国软件行业的能力。被选为研究体验的远程站点将为学生提供一个独特的机会，让他们与在基于模型的测试方面拥有广泛专业知识的国际知名研究团队合作。这些经历将使参与的学生能够开始他们的研究或学术生涯。学生将把他们的新专业知识和技能带回美国，从而提高分布式软件系统领域的经济竞争力，质量保证和学术界和产业界之间更紧密的合作关系。这个项目将为计算机科学专业的学生提供研究新的代码检查机制的机会，以提取模块信息，并确保分布式软件系统中所有模块之间的正确功能和交互。这项研究合作将涉及贝勒大学、布拉格的捷克技术大学和行业合作伙伴红帽。来自布拉格捷克技术大学的合作者专门从事测试自动化、基于模型的实验测试、覆盖优化算法和验证模型。RedHat是开源中间件和企业技术的市场领导者，在生产级质量保证和测试实践方面拥有无与伦比的专业知识。贝勒大学的合作者专门从事代码检查和代码转换。这三个合作小组的互动和协作将促进知识交流，并改进分布式系统的测试自动化和质量保证。学生研究人员将使用现有的开源代码检查工具，并帮助开发和应用新的工具。该IRES项目将提高代码检查技术的知识，以改进分布式系统中的模块测试和质量保证过程。它还将有助于基于模型的测试方法的模型构建的自动化，这将导致改进的测试生成、测试覆盖验证、模块信息合规性验证等。学生在研究过程中创建的个人开源项目将直接有助于改进分布式软件系统的测试和质量保证。最终，结果将有助于减少与测试相关的工作和成本，并提高未来软件产品的质量保证，从而在客户发布之前减少产品中的缺陷和错误。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This IRES project will provide six U.S. undergraduate students with an eight-week summer research experience every year for three years in Brno, Czech Republic. The research experience will enable the students to gain new knowledge and skills related to testing, quality assurance, and code-inspection of distributed software systems used for large enterprises. The students will be mentored by internationally-renowned researchers in the field. The students? projects in the field of testing and quality assurance will be led by researchers from the Czech Technical University and experts from Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open-source enterprise software solutions. The student research and experiments will be performed at the Software Testing IntelLigent Lab at the Czech Technical University in Prague and at the Red Hat research facility located in Brno, Czech Republic. Students will gain complete knowledge of the test development cycle, modern testing toolkits, production-level development, and research skills. Students will research novel code-inspection techniques, further enabling knowledge in this field and boosting the capabilities of the U.S. software industry. The remote sites selected for the research experiences will provide students with a unique opportunity to work with an internationally-renowned research team that has extensive expertise in model-based testing. These experiences will enable the participating students to start their research or academic careers. The students will bring their new expertise and skills back to the U.S., leading to improved economic competitiveness in the field of distributed software systems, quality assurance and stronger partnerships between academia and industry.This project will provide computer science students with the opportunity to research novel code-inspection mechanisms for extracting module information and ensuring the proper functioning and interaction between all modules in a distributed software system. The research collaboration will involve Baylor University, the Czech Technical University in Prague, and industry partner Red Hat. Collaborators from the Czech Technical University in Prague specialize in test automation, experimental model-based testing, coverage optimization algorithms, and verification models. Red Hat is the market leader in open-source middleware and enterprise technologies, with unmatched expertise in production-level quality assurance and testing practice. Baylor University collaborators specialize in code inspection and code transformations. Interaction and collaboration of these three partnering groups will facilitate knowledge exchange and improvements of test automation and quality assurance of distributed systems. Student researchers will use existing open-source code-inspection tools and help develop and apply new ones. This IRES project will advance knowledge of code-inspection techniques to improve module testing and quality assurance processes in distributed systems. It will also help with the automation of model construction for model-based testing approaches that will lead to improved test generation, test coverage validation, verification of module information compliance, and more in this field. Student's individual open-source projects created during their research experience will directly contribute to improved testing and quality assurance in distributed software systems. The results will, in the end, help reduce efforts and costs related to testing and improve quality assurance of future software products, leading to fewer defects and bugs in products before customer release.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.