The two signers will meet next month in China to discuss next steps.

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering has joined with the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Science (ISCAS) in a research laboratory partnership, Viterbi School dean Yannis Yortsos announced today.

USC Center for Software Engineering Director Barry Boehm and ISCAS director Mingshu Li signed the agreement at a recent meeting.

With more than 100 professors and more than1000 employees and graduate students, ISCAS is China’s top software research unit.  USC-CSE, with the world’s largest software engineering Affiliates’ program, which includes more than 30 top corporate software creators and users, is known worldwide for research in software processes, architectures, and economics.  

In signing the agreement, Dean Yortsos said, “This Joint Laboratory is a good example of how the Viterbi School of Engineering is contributing to USCs strategic initiative to expand its Pacific Rim research and educational collaborations, particularly those with China.”

ISCAS and USC-CSE established fruitful initial collaborative efforts through exchanges of personnel and joint organization of the Software Process Workshop 2005 in Beijing, including several joint research papers.  

Boehm and doctoral students LiGuo Huang and Ye Yang will visit ISCAS in Beijing to discuss specific research proposals.  Boehm said that projects will likely include research in software requirements engineering, COTS-based development, process modeling, and economics modeling, along with joint efforts in software engineering education.

Following the Beijing meeting, the USC group will go to Shanghai, where Li and Boehm are keynote speakers in Software Process Workshop 2006, and Boehm is a keynote speaker at the world’s largest software engineering conference, the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering.  

In welcoming the agreement, Li said, “Our collaborations with USC-CSE to date have been most stimulating and productive.  The Joint Laboratory partnership will play a major role in our collaborations with leading research centers around the world.”  

Prof. Boehm expressed similar optimism: “As China is clearly going to be a major future player in software engineering, we look forward to the opportunity to engage in collaborative research with China’s leading software research institution.  Our joint efforts so far have helped us understand each others’ strengths, and to build strong mutual collaboration frameworks for the future.”