Software Engineering Institute

May 17, 2023—The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will co-host an upcoming workshop to inform a community strategy for building and maintaining U.S. leadership in software engineering and artificial intelligence (AI) engineering. The workshop will be held in person in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 20 and 21. Registration for the event closes June 16.

The event will gather thought leaders from federal research funding agencies, research laboratories, and mission agencies, as well as relevant commercial organizations, to explore the fundamental research needed to support progress.

Software and AI are becoming increasingly interwoven into the nation’s economy, infrastructure, education, and health care. Using the SEI’s Architecting the Future of Software Engineering: A National Agenda for Software Engineering Research and Development as a starting point, participants will identify and explore important research areas for the future of software engineering that are critical for multidisciplinary research. They will explore software and AI engineering issues in diverse application domains and address broader interests of the participating organizations. The organizers also hope the gathering will spur new partnerships to advance the disciplines of software and AI engineering.

The workshop will feature networking opportunities and three rounds of lightning talks moderated by the SEI’s Forrest Shull, Ipek Ozkaya, and Anita Carleton. The speakers will include engineering and research leaders from commercial organizations like Google and Facebook and from nine federal agencies and eight universities.

“Advances in software and AI engineering have the potential to provide critical and innovative capabilities across almost every domain,” said Shull, the SEI’s lead for defense software acquisition policy research and one of the workshop’s organizers. “The set of speakers lined up for this event will help us explore software-related challenges across many different domains of importance to the nation, as well as the promising research that will help us engineer those systems reliably and well.”

Breakout sessions will enable participants to identify research questions to encourage collaborations in the computing community; identify addenda or updates to the National Agenda for Software Engineering roadmap; and contribute to a report summarizing challenges and strategic priorities for building and maintaining U.S. leadership in software and AI engineering for the advanced computing and software community.

Registration for U.S. Leadership in Software Engineering and AI Engineering: Critical Needs and Priorities will remain open through June 16. More information about the workshop, including the complete agenda, can be found on the event’s website.