About SEAL
This lab is broadly engaged in research to automate software engineering activities, thereby improving developer productivity as well as the quality of software. The director of the lab is Prof. Sam Malek, a Professor in the Informatics Department within the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.
The underlying theme and long-term goal of this research lab is the development of techniques and tools that aid with the construction, analysis, and maintenance of large-scale dependable software systems. The inherent complexity of large-scale software systems has always posed a significant challenge to software practitioners. On top of this, emerging non-conventional computing domains (e.g., autonomic, embedded, pervasive, and mobile systems) present developers with a formidable set of new challenges.
The overarching hypothesis guiding this research is that it is possible to reduce the complexity of engineering dependable software by automating the cumbersome manual software engineering activities.
The lab's work can be roughly categorized into three research thrusts:
Software Architecture & Design
Representations of a system's implementation that enable developers to abstract away unnecessary details and focus on the system's building blocks and properties.
Autonomic Computing
An increasingly important class of systems capable of automatically adjusting their behavior at runtime to deal with changes in requirements and execution environment.
Mobile Computing
Emerging forms of computing — including mobile, cyber-physical, and pervasive systems — calling for new software engineering techniques to address challenges like security and energy.