Project began as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship, an initiative to introduce students to scientific research 

Two students at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner university, presented their research at an international computer science workshop. The students’ paper was one of only six selected for the 2021 Logical Frameworks and Meta-Languages: Theory and Practice (LFMTP 2021) workshop.

Laila El-Beheiry and Ammar Karkour’s paper describes a tool they created to help programmers verify their work. The tool provides a quicker, easier way to ensure that a program is working as it should.

The LFMTP workshop is an annual event that brings together designers and practitioners from around the world to discuss logical frameworks and reasoning techniques in computer science. This is the first time that CMU-Q students have presented at the workshop.

Giselle Reis, assistant teaching professor in computer science and an advisor on the project, credits the new Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA) program at CMU-Q for introducing students to research at an early stage.

“This is a really nice initiative for students who have never been involved in research before. The faculty members can guide the project and introduce the students to scientific questions they might not think of otherwise,” she said.

Both El-Beheiry and Karkour began their research in this area as part of the SURA program, and they went on to do independent studies in the same area.

“The students have learned to collaborate to answer research questions, write a scientific paper, and go through the peer-review process,” said Reis. “This is excellent experience for them, especially if they want to pursue graduate studies.”

In the latest SURA cycle that took place in the summer of 2021, 15 students participated and presented their final projects to the CMU-Q community.