Programming Languages and Software Systems
The field of programming languages is concerned with concepts, notations, methodologies, tools, and environments for the construction of robust, efficient, maintainable, and evolvable software. Researchers in this field are interested in paradigms such as object-oriented, concurrent, and declarative programming; domain-specific languages; distributed and network programming issues; methodologies for large-scale development of software; and formal foundations (semantics, analysis, verification, testing, etc.) for all aspects of software engineering and programming languages.
Faculty
- Bharat Jayaraman (Professor and Chair)
Laboratories and Research Groups
- Language Research Group
Director: Bharat Jayaraman
The current focus of the group is on languages that support high-level, declarative, and visual modeling of complex systems. Research projects are in the areas of object-oriented modeling, constraint-based design, interactive program visualization, and domain-specific languages for applications in engineering and organizational modeling. In previous research, we have developed the theoretical foundations and experimental systems for a family of set-oriented programming languages.
The Language Research group is developing interactive visualization techniques for procedural and object-oriented programs. Our tools allow the user to visualize clearly the run-time state of programs with recursion, higher-order functions, dynamic objects, inheritance, and so forth. A novel feature of the tools is that they support forward as well as reverse execution. They are a valuable aid for teaching and visual debugging.
Also in development is a novel object-oriented paradigm, called Constrained Objects (Cob), for compositional modeling of complex systems, especially engineering structures such as gears, trusses, and circuits. The environment provides tools for authoring the classes of constrained objects using a new variation of UML, called CUML (Constraint-based UML); visual interfaces that are customized to the application domain, translators for mapping diagrams into executable Cob programs, and a computational engine featuring constraint satisfaction, optimization, and relaxation for executing programs. Together, the modeling and execution tools offer an improved approach to computer-aided design and simulation.
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Research Spotlight
New Building SW elevation
This concept scheme shows the new $75M Engineering building viewed from the southwest. A bridge connects the western face of the building to Ketter Hall. Jarvis Hall is seen on the right. In 2008, UB demolished the trailers that had occupied this site.
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Research Spotlight
Grants for research
CSE faculty averages some $4.5 million annually in grants for research in areas that range from high-performance computing to data mining.
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Research Spotlight
Cutting-edge research facilities
CSE faculty are major participants in the new $200 million Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.
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Research Spotlight
High-performance
CSE's MultiStore Research Group is funded by a $1 million NSF grant for the development of high-performance online data-storage systems.
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Research Spotlight
Automated mail
A CSE-affiliated research center developed the systems that postal agencies around the world use for automatically sorting hand-addressed mail.
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Research Spotlight
New Building NE elevation
This concept scheme shows the new $75M Engineering building viewed from the northeast. Ketter and Furnas Halls can be seen on the left, just south of the new building. Ground-breaking is scheduled for 2009.
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Research Spotlight
Working together
CSE faculty work with researchers in chemistry, the life sciences, the pharmaceutical sciences, media study, geography, and many other disciplines.
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Research Spotlight
Supercomputing
The CSE-affiliated Center for Computational Research is one of the leading academic supercomputing centers in the U.S.
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Research Spotlight
Award-winning faculty
The CSE faculty includes NSF CAREER award holders and ACM, IEEE, and AAAI fellows.
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Research Spotlight
Algorithm therapy
A geometric algorithm developed by CSE professor Jinhui Xu configures a set of radiation beams to destroy brain tumors in a form of computer-aided surgery.
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Research Spotlight
New Building NW elevation
This concept scheme shows the new $75M Engineering building viewed from the northwest. The edge of Ketter Hall is visible on the right, just east of the new building. Ribbon-cutting is scheduled for 2011.
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Research Spotlight
Image analysis
CSE professor Aidong Zhang is developing intelligent content-analysis programs to automatically analyze images, replacing human coding of semantic content.
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Research Spotlight
Structural determination
CSE professor Russ Miller is one of the authors of a program that can determine the structure of molecules as large as 2,000 atoms from X-ray diffraction patterns.
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Research Spotlight
Handwriting recognition
Pursuing work on document verification and identification, CSE researchers use machine-learning algorithms to study handwriting variability.
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Research Spotlight
Crystal clear
CSE Professor Russ Miller, along with Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman, developed an algorithm for crystal structure determination which is considered one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century by Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine.
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