CARAMELOS

Objectives:

Our general academic objective is to consolidate the Ph.D. program in software engineering at Universidad de los Andes. This encompasses the establishment of a solid doctoral school, with a sound scientific basis and well-defined research lines, and with the appropriate infrastructure and resources to support the research team (professors, doctoral students and eventually post-docs). After having gained enough momentum by producing high-quality results, the Ph.D. program in software engineering should get fair local and international recognition. In the end, UNIANDES will have an established research tradition and expertise on the field of software engineering.

As mentioned above, a strong Ph.D. program on the specific field of software engineering is sought after. Strengthening the research capacity of the Department of Computing and Systems Engineering will have a positive, long-term impact on Colombian economy by feeding knowledge and innovative techniques into the software production sector. This constitutes the strategy to remedy the current ill situation where these companies are not competitive. The knowledge produced by means of applied research on software engineering, having been successfully transferred to small companies, will help them producing software more efficiently and with high quality standards. This is our general developmental objective. The promotion of the software production sector will help diversifying Colombian economy.

A final general objective is for the (consolidated) Ph.D. program at UNIANDES to help supplying the demand for high-level professors on software engineering at other universities in the country. Without high-quality teaching at universities all over the country, the average software engineer will not be well prepared and this will hamper again the development of the software sector.