Annual Report 1996

3 Post-graduate Training/Teaching Activities

The objectives of the off-shore UNU/IIST Post-Graduate and Post-Doctoral Courses are:

1. Awareness and Education: To propagate awareness of and provide in-depth training in the most advanced software technology development techniques within the UNU/IIST agenda areas. The main vehicles for UNU/IIST's teaching of formal methods are: (1) The RAISE method, tools and language, possibly the best supported and most mature formal method available today, and (2) The Duration Calculi, probably the most exciting technique for dealing with safety critical, (hard) real-time, reactive and hybrid systems.

2. Fellow Identification: To identify potential Fellows and to discuss with them timing and project subjects.

3. R&D Project Identification: To identify, with leading staff of the host universities or industries in the country of the off-shore course, possible joint advanced development and/or research project actions.

Budget: Off-shore courses typically cost around US$25,000-40,000 each, an expense which includes staff preparation time (salary etc.), travel, books and hand-outs, occasional participant costs, occasional local computer rental, and overhead. Typically each participant receives about US$130 worth of books and hand-outs.

3.1 Fellowship Principles

1. Fellowship Selection Principle:

   UNU/IIST selects its fellows primarily during extended visits by our senior staff to their institutions. We sometimes accept fellows without first having personally interviewed them, but this is rare. Our institutional visits usually last from three to ten days. During our short visits we give a minimum of five to seven lectures of 60 minutes each, usually in the mornings. Afternoons are then spent identifying potential joint research and development (R&D) projects and potential candidates for UNU/IIST fellowships. The three go hand-in-hand:

   1. the institution must be a leading institution (private or public -- usually public) in the country,

   2. the institution must show strong interest in adopting UNU/IIST's Agenda,

   3. it must be seriously interested in and capable of continuing the joint R&D projects when being phased out at UNU/IIST,

   4. and the potential candidates must satisfy a number of further criteria:

      1. they must usually have an M.Sc. degree - with a Ph.D. degree also being desirable,

      2. they must be well-versed in the basics of software engineering and computer science,

      3. and their English must be well above the TOEFL lower thresholds.

2. General Nature of Training: We can basically identify three kinds of training:

   1. Research training: here the Fellows -- during six to nine month fellowships at UNU/IIST-- are trained in doing research: in asking relevant scientific questions and in techniques for solving these.¹²

   2. Development training: here the Fellows -- during eight to 12 month fellowships at UNU/IIST-- are trained in advanced development of software: in methods, principles, techniques and tools. ¹³

   3. Training-the-trainers: here Fellows -- who already have some insight into either of the two main streams of UNU/IIST's methodological agenda, and during short term stays: typically two to four months -- develop, together with UNU/IIST staff, course curricula and course material for post-graduate and post-doctoral courses.¹⁴ Training-the-trainers is also done, to some extent, at UNU/IIST's off-shore courses.

3.2 Advanced Courses

1. Course on Formal Software Development Methods, Hanoi, Vietnam, 22 January 1996 -- 3 February 1996. Chris George.
   Participants were some 20 software engineers from the Ministry of Finance and the Institute of Information Technology of Vietnam

2. Formal Software Development Methods and the Duration Calculi: From Programmes to Large Scale Systems; Reactive and Hybrid System, Bangalore, India, 15-27 April 1996. Chris George, Dines Bjørner, Paritosh K. Pandya, TIFR, Girish Palshikar, TRDDC, Kesav Nori, TRDDC.
   32 software engineers from the private and public sector attended this course which was held at the Supercomputer Education Research Centre (SERC), Indian Institute of Science. SERC was also in charge of course coordination (Co-sponsored UNU/IIST and Indian partners).

3. Formal Software Development Methods: RAISE specification language and method, San Luis, Argentina, 29 April - 10 May 1996, Chris George.
   10 participants from Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Universidad Nacional de Sur and Universidad Nacional del Comahue, attended this training. This course and the course on Large Scale Software development and the Duration Calculus held in San Luis in November 1996 are funded under a World Bank-funded project in Argentina. The mission costs of UNU/IIST staff were covered by the project.

4. Advanced Course on Formal Software Development Methods: RAISE specification language and method, National University of VietNam, Hanoi, 6-17 May 1996. Richard Moore.
   15 participants from universities in Hanoi and from Institute of Information Technology.

5. Advanced Course on Formal Software Development Methods: RAISE specification language and method, National National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 26 August - 2 September 1996. Richard Moore. Participants came from academic and industrial organizations and government departments.

6. Beyond SDL. 3 day courses on SDL held at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 5-7 May 1996; Polytechnical University Bucharest, Romania, 9-10 May 1996 and Kiev University, Ukraine 12-14 May 1996. Kees Middelburg

7. Seminars on Formal Models for Manufacturing, Harbin Institute of Technology, University of Peking, University of Qinhua, P R China; 3-10 July 1996. Tomasz Janowski

8. Seminar on Software Support for Infrastructures, Minsk, Belarus, 17-19 June 1996. Dines Bjørner

9. Seminar on Software Support for Infrastructures, Moscow, Russian Federation, 1-5 July 1996; Dines Bjørner

10. Course on Formal Software Development Methods and the Duration Calculi: From Programmes to Large-Scale Systems: Reactive and Hybrid Systems, UNU/IIST Macau, 2-20 September 1996; For UNU/IIST Fellows and Visitors, 3 weeks

11. Software Engineering, University of Macau, September-December 1996. As in previous years, several UNU/IIST staff contributed several lectures each to the different Software Engineering under-graduate and graduate courses.

12. Seminars on Specification of Computer Programs, 11-20 September, UNU/IIST, Macau. Wlad Turski, Institute of Informatics, Poland

13. Seminars on Specification of Computer Programs, University of Jakarta, Indonesia, 23-24 September 1996 and Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, 26-27 September 1996. Wlad Turski, Institute of Informatics, Poland

14. Tutorial on RAISE, Libreville, Gabon, 7-8 October. Richard Moore. This tutorial was organized for participants attending CARI'96 (Third African Conference on Research in Computer Science.)

15. Course on Formal Software Development Methods and Duration Calculi: Large-Scale Systems, Reactive and Hybrid Systems, San Luis, Argentina; 11-22 November 1996. Dines Bjørner, Dang Van Hung (as part of a World Bank-funded project)

16. Course on Formal Software Development Methods and Duration Calculi: From Programs to Large-Scale Systems, Curitiba, Parana, Brazil, 8-22 November 1996. Chris George, Dines Bjørner, Dang Van Hung (Co-sponsor: CNPq, Brazil)

17. Course on Formal Software Development Methods, Moscow, Russia, 11-23 November 1996. Søren Prehn and Jan Storbank Pedersen

18. Seminars on Formal Models for Market-Driven Manufacturing, Brazil: Federal University of Parana (Curitiba), Pontifical Catholic University of Parana (Curitiba), Federal Center of Technological Education (Curitiba), Federal University of Santa Catarina (Florianopolis); November 1996. Tomasz Janowski (partially with external funding).

19. Beyond SDL, Manila, Philippines, 2-3 December 1996. Kees Middelburg

3.3 Training-of-trainers

As explained in section 6.3, UNU/IIST is becoming increasingly involved in hosting short term Curriculum Development Fellows, for periods of two to three months. During their stay, Fellows study UNU/IIST's course material on Formal Software Development (using RAISE) and Duration Calculi while also further developing this material. So far five fellows and visiting scholars are adapting UNU/IIST courses to the curriculum of their home institution:

1. University of Hyderabad, India

2. East China University of Science and Technology, P R China

3. Wuhan Jiao Tong ([Water] Transportation) University, P R China

4. Hanoi University, Vietnam

5. Kiev Taras Shevchenko University, Ukraine

Curriculum Development 1996 Fellows and Visitors:

	P. Venkat Reddy	1 June 1996 -- 31 July 1996	Fellow	India
	Yu Huiqun	1 July 1996 -- 31 August 1996	Fellow	China
	Tan Xinming	1 July 1996 -- 30 September 1996	Fellow	China
	Nguyen Quoc Toan	1 July 1996 -- 30 September 1996	Fellow	VietNam
	Nikolaj Nikitchenko	19 August 1996 -- 26 December 1996	SSA	Ukraine

Chris George is the main Curriculum Development Tutor.

Annual Report 1996