Project Grant 2551196

The National Science Foundation Division of Information and Intelligent Systems awarded The Research Foundation For The State University of New York $615,000 on January 1, 2027, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070) to develop extreme semantic dynamic analysis techniques for multilingual software systems.

The project, running through December 31, 2029, with performance in Buffalo, New York, focuses on revealing causal relationships between computations across programming language boundaries. The research introduces semantic dependence analysis—identifying when changing one program point causally affects later computations during execution—which differs from traditional structural dependency models that capture connections without necessarily explaining causality. The work employs extreme value perturbations, including nullification of selected computations, and compares original and perturbed executions to identify causal effects. The project develops semantic information-flow analysis to trace how information propagates from sources to sinks across multilingual software components, implements incremental algorithms that update analysis results as code evolves, and produces tools, benchmarks, and educational materials to help developers build more reliable and secure software. Evaluation occurs using controlled benchmarks, real multilingual systems, and vulnerability-detection tasks.

The Research Foundation serves as fiscal agent and sponsored programs administrator for the State University of New York system; the award flows through its parent entity, The Research Foundation For The State University of New York (Sponsored Programs Office - System Administration).