The Management Advancement Research Centre (MARC) was established at FAST_NUCES Islamabad to conduct leading edge research in management sciences with the aim to enhance knowledge and find solutions for industry challenges. Various Special Interest Groups (SIGs) work under MARC, all committed to taking up projects which contribute to the body of knowledge, yet at the same time provide a bridge between academia and practice. The Leadership and Management SIG has carried out various projects on leadership, cross-cultural HRM and performance management over the past few years. International projects and partnerships include work with the Cross-Cultural Management Network (CCMN) under which the main past project covered trust and leadership across cultures, while the current project is based on leadership behaviours, trust and job embeddedness across cultures covering data from 25 countries. Another landmark project of the SIG includes collection of data on the GLOBE 2020 project for comparison of cultural dimension in Pakistan with 100 plus countries in collaboration with Simon Frasier University, Canada; the Director MARC also conducted the GLOBE study in Pakistan in the past. The lead researcher has also been involved in various projects on performance management to improve industry practices, and has a special interest in using data to improve HR practices.

The Project Management and the Organizational Behaviour SIGs expand the scope of MARC. The team's expertise include behavioural decision making in project management, justice, creativity, organizational politics, workplace stressors and psychological stressors. The SIG researchers have various publications in the above mentioned areas and are interested in working with industry to improve organizational practices.

The Software Quality Engineering and Testing Center (QUEST) focuses on engineering of reliable and dependable software systems. Quality Engineering and Testing of software systems is an active research area and is receiving a lot of attention worldwide. However, catastrophic software failures are still reported frequently. There is an ever-increasing need to develop better quality software by using systematic engineering techniques. For this purpose, the center will investigate the use of model-driven approaches for developing high quality software.

Almost all professionals in software industry agree on the need to thoroughly test the developed software. However, the actual testing process is severely hindered by lack of automation. Software testing is a time consuming process that requires specific expertise and automation to be cost-effective, which are often not available in industry.

The QUEST center aims to bridge this gap by developing novel strategies and tools for quality engineering and automated testing that are scalable in industrial context. The real impact of software engineering is visible only when the practices/techniques are transferred to the practitioners/industry. Therefore, the center focuses on performing applied research by solving real industrial problems. For this purpose we work closely with local and international industrial and research partners. The key research and academic goals of the lab include:

• To propose and evaluate new methodologies for engineering quality software systems.
• To develop new and innovative testing strategies for cost effective testing.
• To improve the quality engineering practices of local organizations by providing automated quality engineering tools and techniques.
• To conduct high quality research in collaboration with international research organizations.
• To allow students and researchers in Pakistan to work with top international research institutes and researchers in the field of quality engineering.

International Collaborations

Engineering dependable and reliable systems is a difficult challenge, which requires cross-disciplinary collaboration involving both the academia and the industry. The Quest lab is actively involved in research collaborations with researchers from renowned research organizations such as Simula Labs, Norway and the Inter-disciplinary Center for Security and Trust (SnT).

Current Projects

• Integrated Toolset for automated model-based testing – MBT-Toolset (National ICT R&D Funded) Collaboration: Simula Labs, Norway.
• Automated model based constraint solver. Collaboration: SnT, Luxumbourg
• Automated Re-factoring of UML Models. Collaboration: Cisco Systems Inc.
• Automated testing of model transformations
• Model based development of dependable mobile applications

QUEST Lab Home Page

Impact Factor International Journal publications from QUEST in 2013/2014

• Muhammad Zohaib Iqbal, Shaukat Ali, Tao Yue, Lionel Briand, Applying UML/MARTE on Industrial Projects: Challenges, Experiences, and Guidelines, Accepted for publication in Software and Systems Modeling Journal (SoSyM), 2014
• Shaukat Ali, Muhammad Zohaib Iqbal, Andrea Arcuri, Lionel Briand, Generating Test Data from OCL Constraints with Search Techniques, in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 39(10): 1376-1402, 2013.
• Muhammad Zohaib Iqbal, Andrea Arcuri, Lionel Briand, "Environment Modeling and Simulation for Automated Testing of Soft Real-Time Embedded Software", in Software and Systems Modeling Journal (SoSyM), 2013.

The evolution and maturity of parallel, distributed and Cloud computing in last few decades has opened up new horizons in research and applications in these domains. The objective of SEcure Networks and Distributed Systems (SENDS) research group at NUCES is to explore and provide innovative and secure solutions in the rich field of distributed computing. SENDS team focuses on investigation, design and development of scalable and efficient systems and algorithms for the delivery of services to the end user in a distributed environment over the Internet or via a private network. SENDS research group is working in various related domains such as Cloud, Edge and Fog Computing, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Internet of Things, Information Security and Privacy, Green Computing, Computer Networks (Performance Modeling, Admission and Congestion Control, Quality of Service, Mobility Management and its Cost Analysis, P2P systems, Routing Protocols, Fault Management), Software Defined Networking, Business Processes and Services Oriented Architectures and Middleware Systems. For more information, visit SENDS Lab Homepage.

• C. Mayer, Muhammad Adnan Tariq, R. Mayer, Kurt Rothermel, "GrapH: Traffic-Aware Graph Processing", In IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2018.
• Ehtesham Zahoor, Zubaria Asma, Olivier Perrin, "A Formal Approach for the Verification of AWS IAM Access Control Policies", In proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing, ESOCC 2017, Oslo, Norway, 2017.
• Sukanya Bhowmik, Muhammad Adnan Tariq, Boris Koldehofe, Frank Duerr, Thomas Kohler, Kurt Rothermel, "High Performance Publish/Subscribe Middleware in Software-Defined Networks", In IEEE Transactions on Networking, 2017.
• Hassan Ali-Ahmad, Kashif Munir, Philippe Bertin, Karine Guillouard, Meryem Ouzzif, Xavier Lagrange, “Processing Loads Analysis of Distributed Mobility Management and SIP-based Reachability”, Springer Telecommunication Systems, 63(4), pp 681-696, 2016.
• Kashif Munir, Xavier Lagrange, Philippe Bertin, Karine Guillouard, Meryem Ouzzif, “Performance analysis of mobility management architectures in cellular networks”, Springer Telecommunication Systems, 59(2), pp 211-227, 2015.
• A. Bouchami, Olivier Perrin, Ehtesham Zahoor, "Trust-based formal delegation framework for Enterprise Social Networks", In proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom-15), 2015.
• Muhammad Adnan Tariq, Boris Koldehofe, Kurt Rothermel, "Securing Broker-Less Publish/Subscribe Systems using Identity-Based Encryption", In IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Special Issue on Trust, Security and Privacy, 2014.

The objectives of this centre are to carry out research and development in software engineering and allied application areas. The centre promotes theoretical research in the software engineering area, resolve problems faced by the software industry, and helps establish software engineering practices in the industry. Through SERC, the University seeks to help and support the local software industry in establishing and improving their processes and practices through continuous feedback and training. SERC aims to achieve these objectives by collecting the industry data to understand productivity, cost, and quality parameters. This will hopefully also help in developing more suitable process and lifecycle models for different types of projects being undertaken by our local industry in the offshore and distributed environment. Software Architecture, Software Project Management, Software Quality and Process Improvement are main areas of research.

Sample Projects Completed

• Software Maintenance Prediction: An Architecture Perspective.
• Coverage Analysis for GUI Testing.
• Intelligent Requirement Prioritization using Fuzzy Logic.
• Proposing Architecture for Grid Monitoring Tools.
• Tracing Architecture Decisions to Requirements.
• Proposing Software Project Management Methodology.
• Integrated service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment.
• Software Architecture for 2D Mobile Game Development.
• Sense Me (A virtual interface).
• Authenticated identification system.

On-going Projects

• Framework and Software Architecture for Information Assurance and Regulatory Compliance (“FAIR”)
• A Generic Model for Testing Agent based Applications
• Software Effort Estimation using Evolutionary Computation Techniques
• Widget-Based Application Composition Framework

To bridge the gap between academia and industry, the University has joined hands with Huawei Technologies to establish a training center at its Islamabad campus. It is now a “Huawei Authorized Learning Partner (HALP)” and is able to deliver Huawei Certified Network Associate training program. The three programs currently offered include HCNA Unified Communications and HCNA Storage and HCNA Routers and Switches. Six batches that constituted Industry Professionals and University Alumni have successfully completed HCNA training from HALP.

Huawei Authorized Information and Network Academy (HAINA) is a not-for-profit partnership program that authorizes universities and colleges to deliver Huawei Certification courses to their students. Huawei and Islamabad campus signed HAINA agreement recently and two batches have already completed their Training Program. The University believes that practical knowledge will create opportunities and will support effective and sustainable growth. Through the HAINA program, Huawei and NUCES contributes support to the local ICT education, shares knowledge, creates more opportunities, and builds a better ICT talent eco-system.