The SEI Director’s Office selected the following eight independent research and development proposals for fiscal year 2011 (FY11):

1. “Sparse Representation Modeling of Software Corpora,”
   Principal Investigator (PI): William Casey
   Subject: Using scalable search-and-retrieval techniques to better represent the corpus of malicious software (malware) so that analysts can access it more easily.
2. “Learning a Portfolio-Based Checker for Provenance-Similarity of Binaries,”
   PI: Sagar Chaki
   Subject: Using supervised learning, developing a portfolio of techniques to examine strings of binary code for similar lineage to aid in malware analysis
3. “Fuzzy Hashing Techniques in Applied Malware Analysis,”
   PI: David French
   Subject: Fuzzy hashing techniques that detect and analyze malware effectively
4. “Regression Verification of Embedded Software,”
   PI: Sagar Chaki
   Subject: Regression verification techniques that ensure the correctness of multi-core, real-time, embedded software
5. Safe Resource Optimization of Mixed-Criticality Cyber-Physical Systems,”
   PI: Dionisio de Niz
   Subject: Safe resource optimization algorithms for mixed-criticality, cyber-physical systems; and controlled user adaptations for mobile device platforms
6. “Communicating the Benefits of Architecting within Agile Development,”
   PI: Ipek Ozkaya
   Subject: Techniques for quantifying the value of incremental architecting within agile software development via technical debt analysis
7. “Edge-Enabled Tactical Systems,”
   PI: Ed Morris
   Subject: End-user adaption of capabilities on handheld devices at the tactical edge
8. “Measuring the Impact of Explicit Architecture Descriptions,”
   PI: Rick Kazman
   Subject: Measuring the impact of architectural documentation on the effectiveness of open-source software eco-systems

The SEI independent research and development work is one means by which we stay at the leading edge of science and technology. Its primary purpose is to establish new technical areas of work or projects.

For more information about this creative and innovative research, please read the SEI blog at http://blog.sei.cmu.edu/.