University of Oregon

Institute Name: University of Oregon, Computer Science Department

Description: The Department of Computer Science at the University of Oregon has 18 permanent academic staff, 5 research associates and 80 graduate students (split between MS and PhD levels). It teaches a number of courses in Software Engineering.

The Department is organized into a number of research projects. The projects that will contribute to this proposal are as follows:

1. Software Engineering Research Centre (SERC). The SERC is funded by a combination of the National Science Foundation, membership dues from Industrial Affiliates, the Oregon Joint Graduate Schools of Engineering, and the University of Oregon. The SERC is a national group that also includes faculty from both the University of Purdue and the University of Florida. The Oregon SERC is a branch of this national organization - it draws upon software engineering faculty at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Oregon Graduate Institute and Portland State University. Professor Fickas and Professor Conery are co-directors of the Oregon SERC.

2. Network for Engineering Research in Oregon (NERO). The NERO project is funded by a combination of the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) and the Oregon Joint Graduate Schools of Engineering. NERO focuses on high bandwidth applications over the internet. Currently, this involves Asynchronous Transfer Method (ATM) running at the four research universities in the state. Professor Fickas is involved in several software engineering projects funded by NERO. These include two software engineering collaboration projects: (1) study the use of synchronous audio/video teleconferencing to support a distant software team. (2) study the use of asynchronous interaction among a distant software team. This work involves distributed software engineering using the world-wide web as a foundation.

3. Software engineering distance education. Professor Fickas directs several efforts to deliver software education within the state over the internet (and the NERO network). Most recently, a course on Requirements Engineering and the User Interface was held in the fall of 1994.

The department has begun an umbrella project that works to integrate each of the three separate projects above into a larger whole. The focus of this work is the establishment of a virtual software enterprise. This is an effort to establish an electronic link among (1) university research labs in software engineering, (2) software industries, (3) government agencies relevant to software commerce, (4) the software consumer, (5) software engineering education that supports the technology needed for electronic commerce. A pilot study is being conducted within the state of Oregon. Through SERC, NERO and other state funding, an Oregon Software Enterprise is being built and tested by researchers in the department.

The work that has been done by Prof. Fickas and his students and colleagues include:

• Work on requirements monitoring. This work, carried out with Dr. Martin Feather (NASA) and PhD student Rob Helm, looks at the need to monitor requirements compliance after a system goes into production. A workshop will be held on the idea at ICSE 97.
• Software on demand. This work is part of the Wearables Computing project co-chaired by Professor Fickas. The general RE problem is how to state run-time requirements in a way that they can be met by finding and delivering components over the net. A workshop will be held on the topic at RE97.
• Requirements acquisition for high assurance systems. This work is carried out jointly with Professor Kevin Ryan (Limerick) and Dr. Stuart Faulk (Oregon). The work is coordinated with Dr. Heitmeyer's group at NRL. The goal is to build an early requirements tool for the tabular specification system developed by Faulk and Heitmeyer.
• Meeting scheduler problem. Work continues with Professor Finkelstein (City) and Professor van Lamsweerde (Louvain) to push on the meeting scheduler problem as a common research focus.

Researchers associated with the project:

Prof. Stephen Fickas, University of Oregon

Prof. Anthony Finkelstein, City University

Prof. Kevin Ryan, Limerick

Prof. Axel van Lamsweerde, Louvain

Dr. Stuart Faulk, University of Oregon

Dr. Martin Feather, JPL

Dr. Connie Heitmeyer, NRL

Mr. Rob Helm, University of Oregon

Brief CVs of Key Researchers:

Name: Prof. Stephen Fickas

Nationality: U.S.A.

Academic Qualifications & Experience: Stephen Fickas is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Oregon. He is co-director of the Software Engineering Research Centre at the University of Oregon. He chairs the IFIP Working Group 2.9 on Software Requirements Engineering. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Automated Software Engineering (Kluwer), the Journal of Requirements Engineering (Springer Verlag), and Database (ACM).

Professor Fickas currently holds software engineering grants from the National Science Foundation, SERC, NERO, the state of Oregon, and the University of Oregon.

Professor Fickas has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar Fellowship (British Science and Research Council).

Selected Publications:

Fickas, S., Collins, S., Olivier, S.(1990): Problem Acquisition in Software Analysis: A Preliminary Study, Requirements Engineering, Diaz and Arango (eds), IEEE Press

Downing, K., Fickas, S.(1991): A Qualitative Modeling Tool for Specification Criticism, Conceptual Modeling, Databases, and CASE: An Integrated View of Information Systems Development, Peri Loucopoulos (ed), Ablex

Fickas, S., Helm, R.(1992): Automating the design of composite systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Feather, M.S., Fickas, S.F., Helm, B. R.(1992): Automating composite system design, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Hardware-Software Codesign

Dardenne, A., van Lamsweerde, A., Fickas, S.(1994): Goal-Directed Requirements Acquisition, Science of Computer Programming

Fickas, S., Feather, M.S.(1995): Requirements Monitoring in Dynamic Environments, Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, York, England

Contact Details:

Principal Investigator: Prof. Stephen Fickas

Address: Computer Science Department, University of Oregon 360 Deschutes Hall, Eugene, 97403, Oregon, USA

Telephone number: + 1 503 346 3964

Telefax number: + 1 503 346 5373

EMail: fickas@cs.uoregon.edu

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