Posted by Dr Serena Coetzee on 11 Nov 2009, 13:46 (last modified on 11 Nov 2009, 13:49)

A new research sub-groub for Software Science and Formal Methods (SSFM) was recently established in our department as a third sister-group to the related, already existing Espresso and Fastar groups. The new research group will be led by Stefan Gruner, a senior lecturer at our department.

Our new research group, SSFM, shall deal with theoretical aspects of software and computational systems, with hindsight to practical benefits such as systems correctness and reliability. Thereby “software science” is understood as the systematic body of knowledge about software techniques, software engineering and software technology, including not only theoretical and practical aspects of software itself (conceptualisation, construction, validation), but also meta-scientific and methodological reflections at the interface to general philosophy of science and technology. "Formal methods" are understood as the investigation and systematic application of mathematics- and logics-based techniques, in the domain of software engineering, at the interface between theory and practice, for accurate system descriptions as well as deductive reasoning about system properties.

This entails, for example: rigorous approaches to model transformations in the field of model-driven engineering (MDE), the implementation of software development environments (SDE) in the context of automated software engineering (ASE) or computer-aided software engineering (CASE). However the new group will also deal with a range of other formalisms and topics such as: CSP, UML, the advantageous combination of formal and agile methods in software engineering, etc.

The manager of this subgroup, Stefan Gruner, is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, and is also associated with the European Association of Software Science and Technology (EASST) Formal Methods Europe (FME), as well as regional organisations. The website of the new group is currently in preparation and will soon be launched under the URL http://ssfm.cs.up.ac.za/