Program Announcement

Consider a researcher or graduate student interested in building new technologies and tools to improve software and systems engineering. While the researchers strive to understand and incorporate deep, specific knowledge about a problem domain, they typically have little to no contact with engineers working real programs, making it hard for them to get the information they need. Intellectual property protection, classification and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) exacerbate these challenges. To showcase their research results, researchers thus have little choice but to make up data artifacts using their imagination, and design and conduct experiments that are abstract and typically small-scale representations of the challenges faced by real programs.

Now imagine an online portal dedicated to providing researchers with freely available, realistic, at-scale data artifacts, along with experimentation facilities that allow engineers to use the artifacts to reproduce challenges faced by real programs. Imagine also the researchers using the same data artifacts to demonstrate how their specific technology solves a piece of the challenge. Collaboration facilities that allow program engineers and researchers to discuss and refine assumptions, document experimental results for other future researchers, are all free and openly available to all researchers. The vision of such a portal is shared by diverse organizations such as OSD and AFRL, sponsors of the SPRUCE project, and NSF, supporting the CPS-Virtual Organization project (CPS-VO). Both groups are now closely collaborating.

The objectives of this workshop are:

• To educate the research community about these portals
• Solicit researcher perspectives and suggestions on needed data artifacts, experimentation facilities, and funding opportunities to support their specific research needs.

Presenters and attendees for this event will be drawn from the execution teams of the DoD SPRUCE and the NSF CPS-VO programs and the researchers and practitioners attending the RTSS 2010 event.

To reflect this dual purpose, this meeting workshop will be a two-part event. In the first part, the execution teams for DoD's SPRUCE and NSF's CPS-VO program will present talks incorporating the following themes:

1. SPRUCE and CPS-VO development teams will describe the current state and future plans for their portals
2. Program engineers will describe currently available data artifacts and challenges
3. Researchers will present their experiences and perspectives
4. Sponsoring research agencies will present their perspectives, funding experiences and expectations for fundable collaborations

In the second part of this eventworkshop, we will solicit brief prepared presentations as well as interactive comments and questions in a panel discussion format in each of the following topic areas:

• Suggestions for data artifacts needed to support research
• Suggestions for experimentation facilities
• Suggestions for specific challenges in software engineering (e.g., developing code in a timely cost effective manner, migration to multi-core), along with large-scale artifacts and specific benchmarking measures
• Suggestions for facilitating transition of research technologies into practice, addressing one or more of: discovery and engagement of teams, collaborations and funding practices

Call for Participation

We invite prepared presentations in the following topic areas:

• Suggestions for data artifacts needed to support research
• Suggestions for experimentation facilities
• Suggestions for specific challenges in software engineering (e.g., developing code in a timely cost effective manner, migration to multi-core), along with large-scale artifacts and specific benchmarking measures
• Suggestions for facilitating transition of research technologies into practice, addressing one or more of: discovery and engagement of teams, collaborations and funding practices.

Presentation abstracts should describe the position of the presenter in one or more of the above topic areas or related areas. Submissions are to be in PDF format and should not exceed 2 pages. A submission of a presentation abstract implies that should the presentation be accepted, at least one of the authors will register and present position described in the abstract at the workshop.

The Program Committee will review the presentation abstracts. Comments and notifications will be mailed to the presenters.

Presentations are to be submitted in PDF format. They should be no more than 15 minutes in length and elaborate further on the position of the presenter in one or more of the above topic areas or related areas.

Please send your abstracts and presentations to rtss10-cpbof-talk@sprucecommunity.org. Please be advised that all accepted submission materials will be placed in a publicly accessible repository on the SPRUCE portal.

Organizers

Steve Drager, Air Force Research Labs, Co-Chair

Dr. Richard Buskens, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs, Co-Chair

Workshop Agenda