Computer and Software Engineering Group

The Computer and Software Engineering Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is actively engaged in cutting-edge research in computer systems, software engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The group’s research areas in computer systems include: parallel processing and systems, networkbased high-performance computing, heterogeneous and accelerated cluster computing, communication runtime and system software, parallel programming models, and power-aware computing; computer architecture, embedded systems, and applications of fieldprogrammable logic. Their ongoing research strengths in software engineering are: Source code analysis and manipulation, evolution of software and legacy systems, modelling and understanding of websites, design recovery of scripting languages, automated maintenance and translation; high performance networking and power management for extreme scale systems; network security, software security and reliability, intrusion detection; software analytics, software engineering, software maintenance and evolution, and service-oriented computing. The group’s machine learning and artificial intelligence research is focused on natural language processing, employing techniques such as deep learning to understand human speech and text (see Figure 1).

Members have received international and national awards, including an R&D100 award, a Public Good Innovator Award, IBM Faculty Awards and a Canada Research Chair in Software Evolution. Several also serve on the editorial boards of international journals, organize and chair international conferences, and are technical program committee members for prestigious international conferences. Group members are involved in various grant selection committees as well, such as those for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Discovery Grant and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The group has been supported by a variety of federal and provincial research granting bodies, such as NSERC, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), as well as leading industries in the field. Members also collaborate closely with colleagues in academia and industry—including IBM Canada, Blackberry, and Altera Corporation.