The computer scientist Maria Christakis receives a “Starting Grant” from the European Research Council (ERC) worth around 1.5 million euros. As the university announced on Tuesday, the head of the “Software Engineering” research department at the Institute for Information Systems Engineering wants to use the sponsorship prize to develop methods that can be used to detect errors in program analysis tools that check software for errors.
Errors in computer software are searched for automatically today. Program analysis tools that examine computer codes on the basis of formal logic are used especially for programs in critical areas such as the control of an aircraft or a nuclear power plant. The problem with this is that such tools are extremely complex, “therefore there is a high probability that they themselves contain some errors,” explained Christakis, who has been working at the Vienna University of Technology since last year, in a broadcast. This can lead to incorrect or misleading results.
Instead of verifying the flawlessness of such programs with mathematical-logical precision, the computer scientist pursues a different strategy. It attempts to automatically generate suitable test situations for the software. In the course of the ERC project, she now wants to develop a systematic approach and test a wide range of program analysis tools in order to make them more reliable.