Agitar Software Establishes Research Fellowship Program to Invest in the Future of Software Test Automation
Fellowship to Support Researchers and Open-Source Contributors Working on Software Testing Technology; David Saff From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Named First Recipient
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 28 -- Agitar Software, the leader in developer testing solutions, today announced the Agitar Research Fellowship program. The program aims to provide financial sponsorship and other forms of support to researchers and open-source contributors working on software testing technology. The initiative will be carried out by AgitarLabs, Agitar's recently established division for research and advanced development.
The Agitar Research Fellowship program is open to advanced Ph.D. students and independent researchers working in the areas of software testing and program analysis. The amount of each award is determined on the case-by-case basis and, for a Ph.D. student, typically covers tuition, fees, and living expenses.
"I am very excited about the creation of the Agitar Research Fellowship program," said Alberto Savoia, Agitar's CTO and head of AgitarLabs. "Agitar has deep roots in academic research, and we owe much of our success to that research. By supporting researchers and open-source contributors through a research fellowship program, we hope to encourage the very type of groundbreaking research that made our technology possible."
The primary purpose of the Agitar Research Fellowship is to reward the individuals who demonstrate extraordinary creativity, the potential for high-impact, innovative research, and the likelihood of becoming thought-leaders in their field. David Saff, the 2006-2007 recipient of the Agitar Research Fellowship, is an apt fit. Saff is a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where together with his advisor Dr. Michael Ernst he invented Continuous Testing and Test Factoring. Continuous Testing uses excess cycles on a developer's workstation to continuously run regression tests in the background, providing rapid feedback about test failures as source code is edited. Test factoring creates fast, focused unit tests from slow system-wide tests; each new unit test exercises only a subset of the functionality exercised by the system tests. Saff's previous research includes work on artificial intelligence, intuitive user interfaces, and computing with small distributed devices. In addition to his research activities, Saff is a lead developer for the JUnit unit-testing framework, and has contributed to the testing capabilities in the Eclipse IDE. Agitar Research Fellowship will enable Saff to focus on his research interests and to continue his involvement with the JUnit project.
"I am very interested in how writing tests not only helps to catch bugs, but also helps developers think harder about what their software should do," said Saff. "Collaborating with Agitar has already given me a chance to try out some new ideas in this field, work with powerful software, and interact with excellent people committed to making testing code easier and more valuable."
"We are thrilled to have David as the first recipient of the Agitar Research Fellowship," said Dr. Marat Boshernitsan, AgitarLabs' Director of Research. "Agitar's support gives David financial and creative freedom to pursue several innovative research ideas that he otherwise would not have the opportunity to explore. In addition to producing publishable scientific research results, David's work has the real potential to benefit software practitioners through practical and useful applications."
Researchers interested in learning more about the Agitar Research Fellowship should contact Dr. Marat Boshernitsan, AgitarLabs' Director of Research, for further information.
Dr. Marat Boshernitsan
Director of Research
Agitar Software Laboratories
marat@agitar.com
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software removes the obstacles to widespread adoption of unit testing. This practice, where software developers test their code as they write it, improves software quality and business agility. Agitar's flagship product, AgitarOne, helps Java development teams start unit testing and makes good unit testing more effective, on both new code and legacy Java systems. Customers have shortened development cycles, cut defects handed over to system integration by 90 percent, and reduced the cost of fixing bugs after release by up to 90 percent. Agitar's breakthrough technology, software agitation, has been honored with the Java One Duke's Choice, Jolt Award, Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, and InfoWorld Technology of the Year. Thousands of users at organizations such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, IBM Global Services, Northrop-Grumman, NTT Data, Siemens Medical, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas use Agitar's products to improve in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com .
MEDIA CONTACT:
Steve Eisenstadt
Page One Public Relations for Agitar
steve@pageonepr.com
919-781-8096
Web site: www.agitar.com/
