IMDEA Software Institute

The importance of software is continuously increasing. It is the enabling technology in many devices and services which are now an essential part of our lives, and thus software failures can imply high social and economic cost. Developing software of an appropriate level of reliability, security, and performance, and doing so in a cost-effective manner poses today very significant research challenges. Because of the ubiquity of software, solutions to these challenges can have a significant and pervasive expected impact on productivity and on the general competitiveness of the economy.

The main focus of the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Software Development Technologies (IMDEA Software Institute) is to perform the research of excellence required to devise methods that will allow the cost-effective development of software products with sophisticated functionality and high quality, i.e., safe, reliable, and efficient. In order to achieve this goal the Institute is gathering a critical mass of world-wide, top class researchers and providing them with an ideal research environment. The focus of the Institute includes all phases of the development cycle (analysis, design, implementations, validation and verification), including methods, languages, and mechanisms. Its distinguishing feature is the concentration on approaches that are rigorous and at the same time allow building practical tools.

The IMDEA Software Institute is part of IMDEA, the Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies, a network of international research centers in the Madrid region for research of excellence in areas of high economic impact.

This track is a specialization within UPM's University Master and Doctorate Degree on Software and Systems which focuses on techniques and tools for software development based on rigorous methods. These techniques and tools are aimed at facilitating the cost-effective development of software products with sophisticated functionality and high quality, i.e., which are safe, reliable, and efficient. The program covers a wide range of topics from analysis to testing techniques, including also formal specification, verification, programming language design and implementation, security, etc. Within all these topics, the program concentrates on approaches that are rigorous and at the same time allow building practical tools. An additional distinguishing feature of this program is the high participation of researchers from the IMDEA Software Institute.

IMDEA Software aims to advance the science and technology which will allow the cost-effective development of software products with sophisticated functionality and high quality, in terms of safety, reliability, and efficiency. The area has been chosen because of the importance of software as an enabling technology in many devices and services, the significant problems that software failures bring about, and the cost involved in developing high quality software. The cost-effective development of complex, safe, reliable, and efficient software is not a simple task, and it cannot be solved by simple "magic bullets" or more enlightened management. The problem affects all stages in the development lifecyle.We pursue our mission by focusing on three strategic areas, namely Program Analysis and Verification, Languages and Compilers, and Security and Privacy.

Our research on Program Analysis and Verification advances the foundations and the tools that enable software engineers understand the key properties of the complex systems they are building. Our results range from tools that automatically establish proofs of correctness and safety, which is paramount, for example, for avionics and automotive software, to tools that explore energy consumption profiles at design time, which is fundamental for cost-effective software development in the mobile and embedded domains.

Our research on Languages and Compilers provides software engineers with the means they need to describe their ideas in more concise and modular ways, and to generate correct and performant executables from these descriptions. Progress in this area has the potential to dramatically increase programmer productivity as well as maintainability and reusability of software. Our results include powerful multi-paradigm programming environments as well as novel language-based techniques for building provably secure concurrent and distributed systems.

Our research on Security and Privacy delivers technology that enables computation, communication, and storage in open, untrusted, and malicious environments, such as the Internet of Things. Our results include novel cryptographic protocols and privacyenhancing technology, as well as cutting-edge techniques for detecting and analyzing vulnerabilities and malicious activities in software, hardware, and network traffic. In addition, two fundamental issues, tools and rigorous foundations pervade the vision: tools and foundations.

IMDEA Software builds well-founded and cost-effective tools (prototypes) that help in the automation of high quality software development. In order to transfer the technological advancements to industry tools are a key ingredient. Clearly, tools, methods, and languages should be based on appropriate mathematical foundations, and at the same time be practical, so that they can be applied in the tools mentioned above and thus bring increased levels of automation in the development of high-quality software.