Welcome

Our general academic objective is to consolidate the Ph.D. programme in software engineering at Universidad de los Andes. This encompasses the establishment of a solid doctoral school, with a sound scientific basis and well-defined research lines, and with the appropriate infrastructure and resources to support the research team (professors, doctoral students and eventually post-docs). After having gained enough momentum by producing high-quality results, the Ph.D. programme in software engineering should get fair local and international recognition. In the end, Uniandes will have an established research tradition and expertise on the field of software engineering.

As mentioned above, a strong Ph.D. programme on the specific field of software engineering is sought after. Strengthening the research capacity of the Department of Computing and Systems Engineering will have a positive, long-term impact on Colombian economy by feeding knowledge and innovative techniques into the software production sector. This constitutes the strategy to remedy the current ill situation where these companies are not competitive. The knowledge produced by means of applied research on software engineering, having been successfully transferred to small companies, will help them producing software more efficiently and with high quality standards. This is our general developmental objective. The promotion of the software production sector will help diversifying Colombian economy.

A final general objective is for the (consolidated) Ph.D. programme at Uniandes to help supplying the demand for high-level professors on software engineering at other universities in the country. Without high-quality teaching at universities all over the country, the average software engineer will not be well prepared and this will hamper again the development of the software sector.

The specific academic objective is to gain research expertise and maturity in the incipient Ph.D. programme on software engineering at Uniandes (currently with only one Ph.D. student and no graduates), by using, as a research drive, the real problems found in the Colombian software industry. The project works on three different axes, described next.

Firstly, the Software Construction Group (Uniandes) aims at building a strong research link with the Programming Technology Lab (VUB-PROG) and the System and Software Engineering Labl (VUB-SSEL). VUB-PROG and VUB-SSEL will contribute to the project with their expertise in guiding Ph.D. students. Besides that, VUB-PROG and VUB-SSEL will contribute to the technological solutions envisaged by the Software Construction Group with their knowledge on re-engineering and reverse engineering techniques, generative programming, assisted development (e.g. intensional views) and more. Many of these techniques are based on declarative meta-programming.

Secondly, the Ph.D. graduates produced by the project will have international experience thanks to their stay in Belgium, and this experience counts for the consolidation of a high-level doctoral programme. The local promoters will have gained experience in articulating research with international partners, which will facilitate future similar exchanges.

Thirdly, research expertise is sought on a specific field. The Software Construction Group aims at specialising in the field Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), based on software product lines. Besides gaining general experience in research and maturity in guiding Ph.D. students, the project will bring the group one step forward towards mastering this research domain.

As mentioned above, the driving force of the research project is the problem space of software production in small software companies. The specific developmental objective of the project is to make the knowledge and technologies produced by research actually usable by small software companies. To this end, pilot projects in small software companies are envisaged, which will provide feedback and serve as reality checks and a validation of the results produced by research.

Many reasons motivate the need for a strong doctoral school at Uniandes. First of all, few university professors in Colombia hold a Ph.D. degree (whilst in developed countries every professor has one). Furthermore, it is practically impossible (too costly) to form every Ph.D. abroad. Therefore, a national infrastructure must be built, as many other countries already have, including some in the region: Brazil and Argentina. To build this infrastructure in Colombia, Uniandes is probably the best choice to drive the construction of a research network on software engineering, since Uniandes currently has the strongest research group on the field (the Software Construction Group).

We believe that enhancement of university-level education results in healthier production sectors. Amongst those sectors, the software industry has an enormous potential to improve the economic situation of the country. The software industry does not require either big infrastructure investments (machinery) or inputs (primary materials, etc.), while it leaves a big profit margin. The development of this sector can have an appreciable economic impact. Nevertheless, the software industry -if it is to be effective and make high-quality products- does require highly qualified personnel, particularly highly qualified software engineers who take care of the software production process.

	This project is funded by the Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad