Office of Sponsored Programs and Research presents Outstanding Early Career Award to Robert Dyer

Dr. Robert Dyer, professor in the Department of Computer Science at Bowling Green State University, was honored with the Outstanding Early Career Award, presented by BGSU’s Office of Sponsored Programs and Research, at the Faculty Excellence Awards Ceremony and Reception April 14.

The award is designed to enhance the academic career of junior faculty by providing discretionary funds for the support of future scholarly activities. It brings a $1,000 credit to the recipient's discretionary research account, in addition to a $2,000 cash award.

Joe Chao, chair, Department of Computer Science, wrote in his nomination of Dyer that his research is significant and noteworthy for a junior faculty. Dyer’s current research interests include software engineering and programming languages.

“I am interested in improving upon or developing new programming models to maintain the benefits of software engineering practices such as separation of concerns, agile software development, etc.,” Dyer wrote on his website.

Chao wrote in his nomination that Dyer and his research team are building the necessary infrastructure to mine software repositories. These repositories contain more than 25 billion lines of code. Mining them can uncover knowledge that can be leveraged in maintaining current software and/or developing new software.

This research is scalable, supports domain-specific mining capabilities and advances efficient mining processes. It has been recognized by the National Science Foundation and described in a recent computer science journal publication.

Dyer’s research revealed three problem areas that hinder production of reliable software footprints, which every entity has, and advancing ways to resolve these issues.

“Both of these major initiatives involve collaborations with researchers from other institutions,” Chao wrote. “Collaborative research efforts provide visibility and help advance research and education beyond BGSU borders.

“Additionally, Dyer’s work provides opportunities for our students, especially at the master’s level, to engage in applied research, and fits nicely with the department’s instructional emphasis in software engineering.”

Dyer’s future scholarly initiative extends this research to other domains.