Executives were informed of ongoing initiatives at PUCRS
Photo: Bruno Todeschini
An international delegation of Dell went to the School of Technology of PUCRS early in October. Some of the company’s global leaders, such as Senior Vice Presidents of IT, Scott Pittman, Garry Wiseman, Greg Bowen, Jen Felch, the Vice President for Latin America Steve Crawley and the Vice President for IT, John Fallon, made their presences felt at the University. PUCRS was represented by the Senior Vice President, Dr Jaderson Costa da Costa; the Vice President for Research and Graduate Programs (Propesq), Dr Carla Bonan; the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Dr Adriana Kampff and the Dean of the School of Technology, Dr Sandra Einloft.
According to Dr Bonan, the company and the University have been longtime partners in research projects and development. “This partnership is very important for the undergraduate and graduate programs of the University. We are very happy about it”, said she. Steve Crawley, one of Dell’s representatives, said how happy he is about this strong relationship. “It helps us make local decisions. I am very proud of our partnership”, celebrated he.
Future Dell research laboratory | Photo: Bruno Todeschini
The company’s executives had the chance to learn more about the existing projects at the University. The agreement PUCRS/Dell, coordinated by professor Dr Sabrina dos Santos Marczak, has produced the following projects: IT Academy – Programa de Capacitação em Tecnologia da Informação (Information Technology Development Program) ; Cloud Computing – Pivotal Cloud Foundry; Performance Interference; Avaliação da Escalabilidade de Práticas da Metodologia Pivotal Labs no Apoio ao Desenvolvimento de Software Ágil (Assessment of Scalability of Pivotal Labs for the Development of Agile Software Programs) and Machine Learning para Análise de Casos de Fraude (Machine Learning for Fraud Analysis).
PhD student in the Graduate Program of Computer Science of PUCRS, Silvia Nunes das Dores, has been working on the Machine Learning project. In her view, there is no fraud detection services in Brazil as of yet. “As this is the first year of operation of the agreement, we are getting ready to work on it. We have assessed the testing data provided by Dell and we can now have an idea of the type of information that will be provided and which goals we are expected to achieve”, anticipates she.
At the meeting, the Dell delegation was introduced to the future agile software development research laboratory that is under construction at the Center for Software Engineering Research (CePES), on the ground floor of Building 32. The lab will develop solutions for the large scale implementation of agile methodologies in large companies such as Dell, by establishing guidelines for the evolution of agile teams and for the continuous improvement in software development process.
