NEW ORLEANS, LA, 05/05/2003 -- Lockheed Martin recently presented the University of New Orleans (UNO) with a $25,000 grant for research being conducted by professors in the University's Computer Science Department. The research will focus on improved regression testing, which is retesting a system when an update is made. This seed grant initiates a concrete relationship between UNO's Computer Science Department and Lockheed Martin. This will enable us to conduct research based on and aimed at software industry needs, Dr. Shengru Tu, UNO Computer Science professor and researcher.

The research will include defining an interface model that captures the structural properties and dynamic behavior of integrated commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. This will help the software industry reduce the cost of quality assurance and improve system reliability.

Representing Lockheed Martin at the presentation were Senior Technical Staff Marilyn Gaska and Program Manager Warren Traub. The focus of the grant will be to sponsor research that has direct applicability for use in industry applications resulting in cost savings to customers. We are extremely pleased to be able to support this research, Dr. Gaska said.

Additionally, a case study will be conducted on an enterprise system that deploys specific commercially available products and integration languages. The defined model along with the case study will be generalized into a viable technique for COTS-based systems. The research work will be performed by scientists from UNO's Computer Science Department and will take place at the Computer Science's Visual Computing Research Laboratory (VCRL).

We would like to thank Lockheed Martin for this research grant. We are committed to the establishment of a well-structured research and instructional collaborative infrastructure with Lockheed Martin, said Dr. Mahdi Abdelguerfi, UNO professor and chair of the Computer Science Department.