(opens in new tab)Today, October 29, 2013, the Microsoft Research Connections Computer Science Group (opens in new tab)—in conjunction with the Research in Software Engineering Group (opens in new tab) (RiSE), the Sensing and Energy Research Group (opens in new tab), and Global Foundation Services (opens in new tab)—is officially issuing the request for proposals for the Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF) 2014 awards (opens in new tab). You’ll find more information below on the 2014 RFP.
This marks the fifth RFP since SEIF’s founding. A lot has happened since its formation in 2010, but the goals of the foundation and its annual SEIF Awards have remained constant. As Judith Bishop, director of computer science at Microsoft Research Connections, so ably stated then, “It is these three aspects—education, life, and industry—that the Software Engineering Innovation Foundation Awards were set up to address.”
Today, we can point to amazing SEIF research projects in all three of these areas. For example, Professor Pankaj Jalote of IIIT Delhi, in India, developed a hands-on software engineering curriculum while working on his SEIF 2010 project, “An Integrated Approach for Software Engineering Projects using Visual Studio Platform.” Professor Nilanjan Banerjee of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States, is working to help people with disabilities live fuller lives through his SEIF 2013 project, “Wearable Multi-Sensor Gesture Recognition in Assistive Devices for Paralysis.” And a number of SEIF research projects are addressing the challenges of software development at industrial scale—for instance, the SEIF 2011 project “Augmenting Social Awareness in a Collaborative Development Environment” of Professor of Filippo Lanubile of the University of Bari, Italy. For more information on past winners, visit the SEIF website (opens in new tab).
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As we gear up SEIF’s fifth RFP, we will be holding a SEIF workshop (opens in new tab) in Rio de Janeiro on November 25–26, 2013. This workshop—which will bring together Brazilian scientists, Microsoft researchers, and past SEIF awardees—is intended to advance the state of software engineering in Brazil. It will also provide an opportunity to discuss the proposal guidelines for the SEIF 2014 RFP. Our focus areas this year are:
- Software engineering in and for the cloud
- Data analytics for software development and engineering
- Programming paradigms and software engineering tools for the Internet of Things
- Tools for testing and verification
- Tools and technologies challenging computer science education in general, and teaching of programming in particular
- Empowering end users with program synthesis
- Programming in the presence of uncertainty and approximation
- Infrastructure for cloud-scale software
- Server, storage, interconnect, and data center architecture and design
- Intra- and inter-data center networking
- Resource models and resource-aware programming models
- Resource provisioning, monitoring, and control for cloud computing
We are pleased this year to welcome the involvement of Sensing and Energy Research Group in the RFP, as well as Global Foundation Services, which is encouraging submissions for research in software engineering for Internet-scale cloud services.
The deadline for this year’s proposals is January 31, 2014. We will announce winners by March 24, 2014. We are looking forward to another year of SEIF, and another exciting set of research projects.
—Arjmand Samuel (opens in new tab), Senior Research Program Manager, Microsoft Research Connections
Learn more
- 2014 Software Engineering Innovation Foundation Awards (opens in new tab)
- Current SEIF Award Winners (opens in new tab)
- Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) (opens in new tab)
- Sensing and Energy Research Group (SERG) (opens in new tab)
- Global Foundation Services (opens in new tab)
- Computer Science at Microsoft Research Connections (opens in new tab)
- Collaboration and Funding Opportunities (opens in new tab)