Center for Software Engineering Adds Systems to Its Portfolio

Highly successful Viterbi research unit widens focus, brings on new co-director, and looks forward to major Convocation in fall

     Under the leadership of Prof. Barry Boehm and a new co-director, Professor Stan Settles, the USC Center for Software Engineering will complete a change to become the Center for Systems and Software Engineering at a plenary affiliates convocation scheduled for October 23-26, 2006 at the University Park campus.

Adleman, Boehm elected to National Academy of Engineering
by Eric Mankin

    Two members of the School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), among the highest professional distinctions in the field.

Library Gives Real-World Challenges to Student Software Designers
by Eric Mankin

     A collaboration between the computer science department and University Libraries has put students to work on real, state-of-the-art software challenges with extraordinarily successful resuts.

    In one case, the work done by the students in the graduate-level software engineering class of computer science professor Barry Boehm will almost certainly go into service at the library later this year. And the work done on others will be a boon to libra ry fund raisers in coming months.

The Inspector SCRover (Southern California Rover) is a public safety robot being developed for the University of Southern California (USC), Department of Public Safety (DPS). Inspector SCRover shall enable the DPS to verify threats, involving suspicious materials, without a risk to human life. DPS shall send the Inspector SCRover in areas where suspicious materials may be present. Inspector SCRover shall enter the areas where hazardous materials are suspected to be present and return images of the surrounding environment. The USC DPS personnel shall analyze these images and determine if the materials pose a real threat to the environment, and shall act accordingly. DPS has approached the USC’s Center for Software Engineering (USC CSE) with a proposal to develop the Inspector SCRover. The Center of Software Engineering has decided to use the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL’s), Mission Data Systems (MDS) framework to develop this application. The MDS framework is a reusable mobile rover development software that NASA-JPL is going to use in their Rocky 7 rover to be sent to Mars in the year 2009. CSE shall be the first organization to test the reusability of this framework.