Software Verification and Validation Lab

The Software Verification and Validation department - SVV - is headed by Professor Lionel Briand. SVV focuses on the development and design of reliable, safe, and secure software systems, carrying out both upstream activities such as requirements quality assurance and architecture analysis, as well as downstream verification & validation activities, primarily software testing and analysis.

Motivation

Software is pervasive in all areas of society and industry sectors. Business- and safety-critical systems increasingly use software to improve development productivity, enable more sophisticated operations, and provide flexibility in handling evolving needs. To ensure successful operation and to avoid posing undue risks to users, businesses, or the environment, software must be reliable, robust, efficient, safe, and secure. Despite large investments in the verification and validation (V&V) of software systems, serious software failures and successful security attacks are frequently reported, though many more are kept out of the public sight.

Goal

The SVV, a department of SnT, aims at performing applied research in close collaboration with industry partners. Indeed, for many software V&V problems, there are no satisfactory, universally applicable solutions. Scientific investigation is therefore required to develop cost-effective solutions and understand their context of applicability and limitations. However, we believe that research must be conducted with a thorough understanding of problems encountered in practice and must be guided by the experience and insight of practitioners and engineers.

Leadership

The SVV department is led by professor Lionel Briand, who has more than 23 years of experience in research and innovation. Over the years, he has worked with more than 30 industry partners in research projects, across five countries and two continents. Lionel Briand is an IEEE Fellow and has received the prestigious Harlan Mills award from the IEEE Computer Society as well as the engineer-of-the-year award from the IEEE Reliability society. His three most recent positions are department head at the Fraunhofer IESE institute, Canada Research Chair (Tier I) on Software Quality Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and head of the Certus center for Software verification and validation at the Simula Research Laboratory. 

Members of the SVV Department

There are more than 25 members in the SVV department, including permanent scientists, research associates, and PhD students. 

Financial Support

The SVV department is currently supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR) in Luxembourg with a PEARL grant and an ERC Advanced grant from the European Union. The latter is the most prestigious individual European research grant. In addition, we are provided with direct financial support from SnT industry partners and the University of Luxembourg.