| NSF Org: |
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 25, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 16, 2018 |
| Award Number: | 1350487 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Sol Greenspan
sgreensp@nsf.gov (703)292-7841 CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $400,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $408,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2015 = $79,319.00 FY 2016 = $87,982.00 FY 2017 = $80,658.00 FY 2018 = $81,343.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2600 CLIFTON AVE CINCINNATI OH US 45220-2872 (513)556-4358 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2901 Woodside Drive Cincinnati OH US 45221-0018 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Software & Hardware Foundation |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Software development involves both individual and group activities that search for information artifacts such as code and software development documentation. The research objective of this project is to understand and improve the effectiveness of information gathering in software development. The research adopts foraging theory from biological ecology to mathematically model the economics of information gathering. The research will validate the individual foraging model, extending them to group activities. The models attempt to enhance developer productivity by capitalizing on collaboration and learning by quantitatively characterizing the interdependent relationship at the individual and group levels, characterizing the limits, creating optimal solutions within those limits. The technical approach uses systems of networked information economies involving the production, distribution, and consumption of information products (e.g., tags) by decentralized users operating over a network, as in FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software) communities and Wikipedia. In this economy, costs occurring at the personal level benefit not only the individual but also the group (collective, team, society). The broader impacts arise from higher software productivity, new training methods, and a formal theory that can be used in further empirical investigations.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The outcomes of the project, "CAREER: Linking the Solo and Social Levels in Software Engineering", are twofold.
From the research perspective, the project establishes an ecological-evolutionary, foraging-theoretic foundation to understanding and improving software developers? information seeking tasks, such as code navigation, requirements tracing, and refactoring. Not only are principled ways to increase code foraging efficiency proposed and empirically validated (e.g., clustering-based enrichment http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2015.2419811), but the underlying constructs are also shown to support collaborative software engineering activities (e.g., optimal group size for open-source software change tasks http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2015.2420316). The CAREER project led to the publication of eleven journal articles and thirteen conference/workshop papers, the recognition of a best paper award and a most influential paper award, and the delivery of a keynote by the PI on "Foraging-Theoretic Approach to Software Engineering" at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Progress in Informatics and Computing held in Shanghai, China.
From the education perspective, the project trains two Ph.D. students, four Master's students, and four undergraduate students. The project fully embraces inclusion and diversity, supporting six female students from the underrepresented groups to engage in software engineering research (three Master's students and three undergraduate students). In particular, the project, through its REU supplement, supported Ms. Arushi Gupta who earned not only a Bachelor's degree but also a Master's degree in computing. She joined Google as a software engineer upon her graduation in the summer of 2019. Finally, the project plays an integral part in advancing the PI's career by building a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in the scientific communities, e.g., the PI served as the Program Chair of the 10th International Workshop on Software and Systems Traceability (Montreal, Canada, May 2019), the General Chair of the 18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse (Cincinnati, OH, USA, June 2019), and an Area Coordinator in the summer of 2019 for the NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program at the University of Cincinnati.
Last Modified: 12/18/2020
Modified by: Nan Niu
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