Beginners Guide to Developing on CHERIFunding Call
We are offering funding of up to £100,000.00 for guides on how a software developer who is looking to get started with coding (or porting code) to a CHERI environment can be guided into the ecosystem, its tooling, documentation and code repositories.
What are we looking for?
We are interested in ways to develop material to make adoption of CHERI (and the development of skills) as easy as possible for developers new to CHERI and the DSbD ecosystem.
Sample projects we would want to fund include:
A rapid evaluation of the usability of the documentation / tutorials / videos, and suggestions for ways to improve. This may also include studies of the common mistakes that developers working with CHERI make (see, for example, Porting to Morello: An In-depth Study on Compiler Behaviors, CERT Guideline Violations, and Security Implications, Sami Ullah, Awais Rashid, Proc. IEEE European Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024), or challenges that they encounter as they first begin using the technology. Studies of usability / barriers could make use of the Technology Access Programme (TAP) that has provided prototype CHERI systems to a range of organisations (https://www.dsbd.tech/whos-involved/technology-access-programme-participants/).
Improving the existing support for new users, for instance, through tutorials or documentation on ‘getting started’, ‘fundamentals of capabilities’ or ‘porting code to CHERI’ (see, for example, Porting to Morello: An In-depth Study on Compiler Behaviors, CERT Guideline Violations, and Security Implications, Sami Ullah, Awais Rashid, Proc. IEEE European Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024), etc. Proposals could focus on the re-writing of existing documentation, or the development of new material / tutorials to support developers. We are interested in both static documentation and interactive tutorials (including example code / walkthroughs / web tutorials etc).
Novel ways to support new users of CHERI through explainer videos / interactive resources. For instance, we would welcome proposals for animated videos that provide a ‘welcome to CHERI’.
Guidelines and approaches to testing CHERI-based applications and best practices for programming conventions and mitigation of developer-induced vulnerabilities (see, for example, Porting to Morello: An In-depth Study on Compiler Behaviors, CERT Guideline Violations, and Security Implications, Sami Ullah, Awais Rashid, Proc. IEEE European Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024).
We are also open to other ways to improve the documentation and support for developers not outlined above. In this call we are not interested in funding projects designed to market CHERI or its benefits.
Timeline
Call Opens: 10th July 2024
Call Closes: 8th Sept 2024
Earliest Project Start Date: 1st October 2024
Latest Project End Date: 31st March 2024
Funding available and eligibility
A total fund of £100,000 is available for this call, and we expect to support 2-3 proposals. Funding will be provided at 100% of the Full Economic Cost (i.e. bidders are not required to subsidise any costs).
Funding is available to both researchers at UK Universities and within commercial organisations.
All spending on the proposed projects must be accounted for by the end of March 2025.
How to apply
Provide a brief description of your idea and how it meets the assessment criteria by filling our application form here.
Please complete the form using minimum font size 11 Arial. The completed form and short (2 page) CVs for applicants should be submitted in pdf format to discribehub@bath.ac.uk with subject title “Beginners Guides to Developing with CHERI Fund Application 2024”.
Please ensure your name is included in the filename of documents submitted.
In applying for this funding, you are agreeing to comply with our standard terms and conditions for funding (https://www.discribehub.org/terms).