‘Safety critical’ study wins PhD student scholarship

‘‘I’m looking at different ways and combinations to use interaction sequences for testing purposes.’’

A Waikato University student’s work on ‘‘safety-critical’’ systems has been rewarded.

Doctoral student Jessica Turner is studying Supporting Interactive System Testing with Interaction Sequences for her PhD under the supervision of Dr Judy Bowen and Professor Steve Reeves.

The computer science student and doctoral assistant has just been awarded a Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship of $5000 to accompany her University of Waikato doctoral scholarship, which gives her $22,000 a year plus course fees.

‘‘My interest is in interactive systems that are ‘safety critical’, such as infusion pumps that are used for dispensing medicine and must be precise,’’ Jessica said.

‘‘I’m looking at different ways and combinations to use interaction sequences for testing purposes.

‘‘Some of these sequences poten- tially could be hazardous, and it is important to identify these before the system is put into widespread use.’’

She’s enjoying the challenge to come up with a testing approach that could be used across a lot of applications.

During her Bachelor of Computing and Mathematics Honours year, Jessica researched combining testing strategies for interactive systems. From this research questions emerged about interaction sequences and testing.