Mission and strategy

We aim at progressing the state of the art in Software Engineering, with an emphasis on the application of experimental validation approaches, as well as disseminating best practices in that scope, in academia and industry.

• Plan and fund our research
  • Clearly identify a set of research threads to keep our research focused, to foster the production of scientific contributions;
  • Forecast expected research outcomes, identify best suited target venues and plan activities to meet the corresponding deadlines;
  • Review the results of ongoing threads on a yearly basis, and decide upon available resources assignment to each thread;
  • Prepare and submit research projects regularly to government research funding institutions;
  • Sign cooperation agreements and propose knowledge transfer projects with industry partners.
• Increase our research potential and impact
  • Foster joint research work within QUASAR (e.g. MSc students working in teams with PhD students) as well as with researchers from other groups;
  • Ensure a regular participation in major international scientific venues, either as organizers or submitting for peer review, to maximize feedback on our work;
  • Increase the participation in research networks, as a means to promote ideas cross-fertilization, searching for complementary research strengths and interchanging researchers;
  • Disseminate all scientific results produced by the QUASAR group members.
• Foster team spirit and increase critical mass
  • Organize regular QUASAR workshops, namely to provide first-hand feedback to junior researchers from senior members and invited professors;
  • Grant international visibility for every QUASAR researcher (current or former) in this site;
  • Offer positions for high potential junior researchers (nationally and internationally) with research interests in the scope of our threads;
  • Support incoming foreign students in their setup period (e.g. finding accommodation, providing a physical working space at the university campus).
• Nurture a culture of research responsibility
  • Along with the research results (e.g. papers, technical reports and dissertations) to make available in this site to the community, we will provide, to the full extent possible, the materials required for other researchers to replicate our research work (e.g. data samples);
  • Produce and make available open-source tools to facilitate automated software engineering (e.g. supporting the conception of controlled experiments);
  • Coaching junior researchers in assuming a responsible conduct of university research, in compliance with state and university regulations and guidelines (e.g. complying with non-disclosure agreements in projects, discourage self-plagiarism in scientific production);
  • Keep a concern on how our research results can benefit the society that is funding our work, either by a regular update of lecturing materials with contributions from our research threads, and by promoting knowledge transfer activities with industry.