Dawn Lawrie, Ph.D., and David Binkley, Ph.D., both members of Loyola College in Maryland’s computer science faculty, recently received a $309,757 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of their project “Making Sense of Source Code: Improving Software through Information Retrieval.”

The three-year grant will help Lawrie and Binkley advance their efforts to improve the cost-effective development of software through the use of information retrieval, a collection of techniques that automate the search and categorization of natural language texts. Lawrie and Binkley’s project focuses on the normalization of the language used in software artifacts, from requirement and design documents to source code and test plans. Normalization makes information retrieval techniques more effective when applied to software, and helps promote the improvement of existing software tools as well as the development of new technologies.

“The application of information retrieval to software engineering problems is a relatively new field,” said Lawrie. “We are both very excited that the NSF chose to support our efforts, including the ability to involve students here at Loyola and to travel to international gatherings to discuss open problems and potential solutions with experts in this young but growing field.

In addition to its contributions to the development of technology, the project also promotes Loyola’s undergraduate curriculum goals by creating opportunities for students to participate in the research process. For example, a recent summer research student considered grammar rules for data structure field declarations. These grammar rules will help beginning students make good data-structure design choices. Their results will also be introduced in classroom learning, offering undergraduate students a chance to better understand cutting-edge research developments.

Lawrie, who earned her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is an associate professor in the computer science department. Binkley, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is a professor.