Via Innovation Fund Denmark's InnoExplorer program, which is awarded for research results with commercial potential, Professor Anders Møller from the Department of Computer Science has received DKK 1.5 million to further develop software tools that can analyze JavaScript programs and automate updating these. The project, JSFIX, is carried out in collaboration with Martin Toldam Torp and Benjamin Barslev Nielsen, who are both PhDs from Anders Møller's research group.
It is estimated that there are millions of JavaScript programmers worldwide, all facing the same challenge - namely to ensure that their programs are updated with the latest software packages. The new research-based tools will make this work easier and at the same time reduce the number of errors and thus the risk of security breaches.
The project is a further development of three research articles, all of which have been admitted to international top conferences in the field of programming languages. During 2022, Anders Møller, Martin Toldam Torp and Benjamin Barslev Nielsen will further develop their software so that it can be used on a larger scale. In addition, the software must be tested on Open Source software and in collaboration with selected companies. To strengthen commercial distribution, an advisory board, made up of experienced people from the IT industry, contributes.
“Companies have to think about how to maintain, upgrade, and refactor their code. The solution is ‘robots for code’ which automatically refctor and upgrade the libraries and internal APIs. JSFIX is a huge improvement to the current state-of-the-art dependency upgrade tools by offering semantic patching and has considerable commercial viability,” says Drew Dennison, co-founder and CTO at R2C and member of the JSFIX advisory board.
Find more information at https://jsfix.live/
InnoExplorer is the Innovation Fund Denmark´s program that aims to mature entrepreneurship based on knowledge and research results from the public Danish research and education institutions and hospitals.
The programme invests in early-stage entrepreneurship ideas, uncovering the potential hereof and propelling them to a stage where they are ready to be introduced in the market or to attract further public and private investments. For an idea to be at an early stage means that it is still at a pre-commercial stage, but is based on knowledge or research results, which, according to the institution with which the applicant is employed, are promising and sufficiently mature for launching a process towards commercialisation.
InnoExplorer invests between DKK 500,000 and 1.5 million in each project (incl. overhead), and projects may last up to 12 months. The funding can cover payroll costs, fees for external actors and services as well as expenses for material and equipment.
More information about Innoexploerer is available on Innovation Fund Denmark’s website: https://innovationsfonden.dk/en/programmes/innoexplorer
