| NSF Org: |
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | January 25, 2023 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 7, 2025 |
| Award Number: | 2236233 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Anindya Banerjee
abanerje@nsf.gov (703)292-7885 CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | March 1, 2023 |
| End Date: | February 29, 2028 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $524,926.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $308,808.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2024 = $107,391.00 FY 2025 = $92,949.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1109 GEDDES AVE STE 3300 ANN ARBOR MI US 48109-1015 (734)763-6438 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2260 Hayward ANN ARBOR MI US 48109-2121 |
| 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: |
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002728DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002627DB 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
Process Automation continues to be a main driver of digital transformation. Yet, it is still technically very demanding to create such automation programs. This project aims to significantly lower the technical barrier of creating web automation programs. The project?s novelties are a suite of new rewrite-based program synthesis algorithms that can automatically generate programs from user demonstrations. The project?s impacts are to enable non-experts in need of performing a tedious but programmatic web-related task to create a program to automate the work, even if they have little or no background in web programming.
At the core, this project is developing algorithms that take as input a user demonstration ? in the form of a trace A of user actions (e.g., clicking buttons, scraping data) ? and synthesize a parameterized program P with control-flow structures by rewriting A to P. The approach is based on finite tree automata and involves both neural and symbolic elements in the underlying web automation language, with the goal of being able to effectively reason about the webpage contents while still leveraging the underlying webpage structure. The project is curating a new suite of web automation tasks that are independently useful for future research beyond this project. The investigator is collaborating with partners at Michigan (e.g., Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), Michigan Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (MI-LSAMP) and Engineering Center for Academic Success (ECAS)) to increase participation of students from underrepresented groups in his research.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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