March 29, 2004

Williams Wins NSF Career Award for Secure, Reliable Software Research

Dr. Williams

Dr. Laurie A. Williams, assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (Career) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), effective April 1, 2004. The award is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young university faculty in science and engineering.

As part of the award, NSF will provide $400,000 in funding over the next five years to support her research project entitled “Test-Driven Development of Secure and Reliable Software Applications.” The objective of this research is to extend, validate and disseminate a software development practice to aid in the prevention of computer-related disasters. The proposal includes plans for an inter-university student competition to build excitement about developing secure and reliable software applications and a revised undergraduate software engineering textbook that will integrate security and reliability topics.

Williams’ primary research interests include agile software development methodologies and practices, collaborative/pair programming and software reliability and testing, particularly in relation to secure applications.

Williams received her PhD in computer science from the University of Utah, her MBA from Duke University and her BS in industrial engineering from Lehigh University. Williams also is director of the NC State Laboratory for Collaborative System Development and affiliated with NC State’s Electronic Commerce Program.

— pishney —

(Photo: Herman Lankford)

/ Awards Index / Awards Archives Index /