S&E Undergraduate Programme of Summer Training and Research Track (UPSTaRT): Student Experience - Computer Science

Student: Brendan Golden

Course: LM121 BSc in Computer Science, Department of Computer Science & Information Systems

Supervisor: Dr. James Patten. 

Research Objective: Investigation of Synthetic Data Generation for Software Clone Detection using Grammatical Evolution.

'Hi, my name is Brendan Golden, and I am one of 25 first-year students that took part in the UPSTaRT Summer Scholarship. Over the summer, I have been researching different applications of Grammatical Evolution (GE) to generate software clones (different forms of code duplication) under Dr. James Patten. The main aim of this research is to investigate the feasibility of using GE to generate annotated datasets, a process that is currently done by humans and is extremely time intensive. 

These datasets can then be used to train more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as those being developed by Lero, to detect software clones in large codebases in order to allow for easier debugging.  During the spring semester I was introduced to the concept of Backus–Naur Form (BNF) as part of the normal curriculum, this topic formed the bedrock of my research this summer. 

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. James Patten, who in our bi-weekly meetings helped to guide and focus me, as well as address any issues I encountered during the week.  Under his tutelage, I was able to participate in an active Lero research group and was able to observe how academic research functions as well as its real-world applications. I would like to give a special thanks to the University of Limerick Faculty of Science & Engineering for this great opportunity.'