Fully funded PhD Studentship in collaboration with GE Aviation Systems Ltd

The University of Northampton

£13726 per annum (including £1000 research expenses budget) and tuition fees for 3 years

Applications are invited for a 3-year fully-funded PhD studentship in the area of Model-Based Software Engineering. This PhD project will be funded jointly by both The University of Northampton and GE Aviation Systems Ltd.

Project Description

Model-Based Development (MBD) is seeing widespread adoption in a variety of domains within industry, especially in aviation. Industries around the world are reporting significant benefits from its use. However, the extent to which MBD can be used effectively in the software development lifecycle is unclear.

GE Aviation Systems primarily uses natural language (textual ‘shall’ statements) to express software requirements. These textual statements are often ambiguous, untestable, incorrect, missing detail, etc. Finding this out late in the development lifecycle proves very expensive. To this end, GE Aviation Systems has turned to MBD. They still use textual statements to express software requirements, but they supplement the requirements writing activity with modelling and simulation so that engineers gain a better understanding of the requirements and their faults. The models can then be refined and improved and serve as the Software Design artefacts that are used to auto-generate code. Currently, this means they have to write tests manually to test the design against the requirements. The study will investigate whether they could use models to express requirements and use those models to auto-generate test cases for testing the design model. This would then increase their productivity. To summarise, the research project will study the feasibility of model based tool support to capture requirements and automate requirements based testing.

Eligibility Criteria

• The studentship is open to both national and international candidates.
• Candidates should have at least an upper second class honours degree (UK or equivalent) and/or a strong Masters degree in computer science or related discipline.
• Candidates should have good programming skills in Java and/or C++ and an appreciation of the Software Development Lifecycle.

Deadline for Applications: 28^th July 2013

Start date: To be negotiated

Informal enquiries can be made to Dr. Suraj Ajit (suraj.ajit@northampton.ac.uk)

The application form should be completed and submitted by email to: researchdegrees@northampton.ac.uk. Include a comprehensive CV.

Attachments should be in PDF or Word format.

Please quote reference: UN13MBD