NSERC and BlackBerry are committing $2.5 Million to support the research of Dr. Ahmed Hassan, NSERC BlackBerry Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering.
Earlier today, Dr. Hassan was named a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Software Analytics. BlackBerry and NSERC will also co-fund a long-term grant to support research projects at the Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab. SAIL’s research under the directorship of Dr. Hassan focuses on providing analytical approaches to support the development and operation of Ultra Large Scale (ULS) systems.
ULS systems power much of the software that we use on a daily basis. The world’s banking systems, the Blackberry platform, the GM OnStar network, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Xbox Live and the World of Warcraft are examples of ULS systems. This new generation of distributed systems poses problems of scale, speed, availability, reliability, privacy and security that dwarf those of traditional enterprise systems. With so much economic and social activity depending on ULS systems, they must operate flawlessly all the time. They require different methods to create, manage and maintain.
The School of Computing is home of the world’s largest training and research efforts for ULS systems. The School currently offers an NSERC CREATE Graduate Specialization in Ultra-Large Scale Software Systems. The specialization offers students the opportunity to enhance their professional and developmental skills through practical and industrially motivated research. The School also leads several multi-institute research efforts that focus on the development of next generation ULS services (e.g., the ORF ULySSes project).