Research Assistant: Input Invariant Feedback

Job Title:

Research Assistant: Input Invariant Feedback

Job Summary:

Research assistant to help implement and evaluate an automated feedback system for programming assignments.

Full Job Description:

Research Topic

Students who have taken Computer Science courses can attest that having a test suite to check whether your program is correct gives valuable feedback in an accessible way. However, some assignments have hundreds if not thousands of test cases, and going through all the failing tests is a daunting task.

Although there are existing tools to help with this, they are fairly limited. I am looking for a research assistant (RA) to work with me to build techniques that will give hints about the failing tests to the students automatically by figuring out the common facts among different failing inputs. In this research project, you will also gain experience with state-of-the-art software engineering methods such as automated test generation, and tools that analyze other programs’ behavior as they run.

Qualification

This position is open to USF students in good academic standing. Strong applicants will satisfy two of the following requirements:

• Familiarity with the theory of programming languages or implementation of compilers and interpreters (e.g., having taken CS 345, CS 414 or CS 652).

• Experience with statically-typed functional programming languages such as Haskell and Scala.

• Experience with generating structured random data to test computer programs.

Duties

Your duties as an RA are:

• Attend weekly meetings with the supervisor.

• Become familiar with the inner workings of existing tools in the domain.

• Implement more sophisticated analyses on top of these tools, and integrate them with automatic feedback systems.

• Read relevant academic papers.

• Help collect data on the effectiveness of these tools via surveys (in the case that the position resumes in Fall).

• Help write and present the findings resulting from the project, including potentially drafting a conference paper or presenting on it at venues such as CARD, CS Night, student research competitions, and academic conferences.

Upon successful completion of the work and getting positive findings, you will be invited to be a co-author on a research paper on this work.

Full-Time/Part-Time:

Part time

Pay Rate:

Hourly

Salary Range :

$18.07/hr