MSE Team Presents to NASA JPL

In early November of 2017, an team comprised of students Jianan Zheng, Kunal Yadav, Swati Dhawan and Yifei Liu from the Institute for Software Research's Master of Software Engineering (MSE) degree program were invited to NASA JPL in Pasadena, Califonia, to present their work on the “F Prime” framework. The F Prime framework is a tool developed by NASA JPL to support automated code generation for instruments, CubeSats, and other small platforms.

As a part of their Studio Project - the MSE's hallmark multi-semester full-lifecycle sponsored development project - the team formalized the language used to describe and interconnect the modules from which the code is generated as well as created a parser to process it.

This work will help NASA engineers develop higher quality code faster by allowing them to concentrate on mission-specific logic rather than common implementation patterns. In the future, the project will continue helping NASA JPL optimizing the language and provide more functionality of the modeling tool.

In appreciation for the work done, the team members were treated to a very special tour guided by NASA engineers where they visited the Mission Control Center, the Spacecraft Assembly Lab, and saw a full-size replica of the Mars Exploration Rover.

The project is sponsored by NASA JPL, ISR's David Garlan and Bradley Schmerl and mentored by Eduardo Miranda and Mel Rosso-Llopart.