Topic: College of Sciences and Humanities

January 12, 2007

Two Ball State professors were honored Jan. 11 for their work in software design metrics with the third annual Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation.

The husband and wife team of Wayne and Dolores Zage, computer science professors, received the award Jan. 11 from the National Science Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) Association during ceremonies in Washington, D.C. I/UCRC supports 42 centers involving 100 universities, 667 member firms, 750 faculty and 1,200 students.

The Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize is awarded annually in the name of Alexander Schwarzkopf, who established the I/UCRC in 1979.

"Considering that we are part of an organization that includes about 750 faculty, this is a tremendous honor for both of us, our department and Ball State," said Wayne Zage, who also is the director of the Software Engineering Research Center (SERC) at Ball State. Delores Zage serves as SERC's research coordinator.

The award recognizes the Zages' achievements in developing software design metrics that identify fault-prone modules early in the software life cycle, thereby allowing significant improvements in software quality and productivity. 

This approach can be used to highlight stress points in a design and to determine overall design quality, thereby greatly reducing the time and cost required to complete the development of new software.

Previous winners of the Schwarzkopf Prize are Thomas Overbye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for his development and technological transfer of power system visualization software, and Kristofer Pister, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at University of California at Berkeley, for his successful pioneering achievements in developing and inspiring the commercialization of "Smart Dust," a wireless network of miniature sensors. 

More information about the I/UCRC program may be found at  www.nsf.gov/eng/iucrc/.

By Marc Ransford, Senior Communications Strategist