Research Plan. This project seeks to uncover the principles that underlie the specification and verification of cooperative information systems (CISs). Such systems are being applied in a number of important problems. A key challenge is how to design, implement, and validate CISs that respect application semantics. This project addresses the above challenge in the context of two major categories of applications: information search and enterprise integration. This project will develop "search plan models", and define generic techniques to specify and schedule them. It will also develop "workflow coordination models", including representations for resource semantics and workflows, and develop techniques to enact coordinated workflows so that interresource constraints are met. It will implement design tools that incorporate the above theoretical advances. This project includes iterative evaluation and refinement of the developed techniques with respect to a structured case-law of problems.
Education Plan. This project will develop a program for "distance education" geared to computing. Interestingly, some of the difficulties of computing education can be naturally addressed in a distance setting, while reaching out to working people and residents of remote areas - traditionally underrepresented in higher education.