Critical Systems Research Group
The
Critical Systems Research Group (CriSys) research
interests are in
the general area of software engineering; in particular, software
development for critical software applications � applications where incorrect
operation of the software could lead to loss of life, substantial material
or environmental damage, or large monetary losses. The long-term goal of
our research activities is the development of a comprehensive framework for
the development of software for critical software systems.� Our work has focused on some of the most
difficult and least understood aspects of software development�requirements specification and
validation/verification.
To explore these topics, Professor Mats Heimdahl established the
Critical Systems Research Groups (CriSys) at the University of Minnesota.
The group has been consistently funded at a level of 4-6 supported research
assistants and occupies its own well-equipped laboratory. Funding for
CriSys has come from a wide variety of sources including the National
Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, DOD, Minnesota Department of
Transportation, and the University
of Minnesota.
The groups earlier work involved (1) the development of easy to
use formal modeling languages suitable for the modeling of embedded
control applications and (2) the application of special purpose static
analysis techniques. This work provided the foundation for their work
on a requirements engineering environment, called NIMBUS, that allows both static and
dynamic evaluation of formal requirements models. The NIMBUS environment has formed the
testbed for the group�s continued research into requirements modeling. The
capabilities of NIMBUS allows a modeling technique we call specification-based
prototyping that allows an engineer to use the formal requirements
model as a prototype for dynamic evaluation purposes (including
hardware-in-the-loop simulation).
While continuing to
explore formal modeling and model validation, CriSys has, among other
projects, investigated how a formal foundation can be leveraged to reduce
software development costs and increase software quality.
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