UA Student Recognized as 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow

By Alana Norris

guy in chair at a desk with 2 computer monitors

A doctoral candidate at UA, Nasir Eisty’s research interests are in the area of software engineering. He completed his master’s degree in computer science at UA in 2018.

Nasir Eisty, a doctoral candidate in the computer science department at The University of Alabama, has been selected as a 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow.

“Being a software engineering researcher for scientific software, I was very excited to receive this award in recognition of incorporating software quality activities to the scientific software development community,” said Eisty.

Better Scientific Software, or BSSw, is a U.S. Department of Energy project focused on improving software for computational science and engineering. The fellowship program provides funding for leaders and advocates of high-quality software.

Eisty, who works in UA computer science professor Dr. Jeffrey Carver’s software engineering research lab, will receive $25,000 to develop a tutorial on automated testing for scientific software.

“Being chosen for this honor as a Ph.D. student is quite an achievement,” said Carver, a 2018 BSSw Fellow. “This fellowship will provide Mr. Eisty with opportunities to interact with members of the computational science and engineering community in a way that would not be possible otherwise.”

Eisty’s work will focus on the development and delivery of a hands-on tutorial entitled “Automatic Testing in Scientific Software.” In the tutorial, he will give background information on automatic testing techniques in scientific software development and demonstrate hands-on test methods before concluding with a group discussion on the approaches most suitable for individual projects.

He will have the opportunity to interact with researchers from DOE national laboratories to introduce the tutorial.

He targets to present his tutorial at the eScience International Conference and the SuperComputing Conference to help developers produce more correct and reliable software. He will conclude his fellowship time with a BSSw webinar containing the tutorial materials.

Eisty was recently recognized along with the other 2020 Fellows during the 2020 Exascale Computing Project Annual Meeting on Feb. 4 in Houston.

In 1837, The University of Alabama became one of the first five universities in the nation to offer engineering classes. Today, UA’s College of Engineering has more than 5,200 students and more than 170 faculty. In recent years, students in the College have been named USA Today All-USA College Academic Team members, Goldwater, Hollings, Portz, Boren, Mitchell and Truman scholars.


Author: Alana Norris    /    Posted on: April 29, 2020    /    Posted in:   Awards and Honors, Faculty and Staff, Research, Students