First Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award in Software Engineering and Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award in ICS Recipients Selected

Congratulations to the first recipients of the Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award in Software Engineering and the newly established Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award in ICS!

Fourth year Ph.D. student Negar Ghorbani has been awarded the first Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award in Software Engineering. Ghorbani, who is co-advised by Prof. Joshua Garcia and ISR Director Prof. Sam Malek, will receive a $5000 award.

Ghorbani’s research focuses on addressing the need for sophisticated automated analysis tools to detect architectural inconsistencies in software and bridge the gap between the prescriptive and descriptive architectures. She utilizes the Java Platform Module System (JPMS), one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. She is working on designing and developing a self-adaptive framework through which software developers and architects can load and unload each component of their Java application at runtime and on demand without introducing any architectural inconsistencies. If successful, her work will allow software practitioners to streamline expensive and error-prone system maintenance and evolution efforts through the automation of architectural detection and repair, which has an inherently system-wide scope. Additionally, her project would be a major step forward to addressing one of the most difficult problems in software engineering and software architecture, i.e., the decay arising from differences in a system’s prescriptive and descriptive architecture.

“It is an honor to recognize the first recipient of the Richard N. Taylor Graduate Award,” says Chancellor's Prof. Emeritus Richard Taylor. “Established through gifts of former graduate students, alumni, and friends, it enables the recipient to focus more intently on their research. Negar’s research is heading along a successful path following those donors’ own journeys, and I am very pleased to note, within the field of software architecture.”

Third year Ph.D. student Adriana Meza Soria has been awarded the first Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award in ICS. Meza Soria, who is advised by Prof. André van der Hoek, will receive a $10,000 award.

Meza Soria’s research involves the design and evaluation of a novel suite of tools that enable software designers working at the whiteboard to: (1) efficiently and in-the-moment capture important information produced during that meeting, and (2) deliver, either by request or proactively by the tools, relevant information captured in the past when it is needed in a future design meeting. You can read more about it in this spotlight article.

“It is a ‘dream come true’ for me to congratulate the first recipient of the Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award,” says alumnus Dr. Rosalva Gallardo Valencia. “Congratulations to Adriana on receiving this award! Adriana’s research on how to preserve important information from design meetings is relevant and promising for both academia and industry. Adriana’s leadership in creating opportunities for underrepresented communities to pursue graduate degrees in STEM is impressive and inspiring. Keep up the good work, Adriana!”

For more on Negar Ghorbani, visit: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~negargh/

For more in Adriana Meza Soria, visit: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~amezasor/