Delaware earns NSF CAREER Award
08-28-2026
Ben Delaware, associate professor in Purdue University's Department of Computer Science, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to advance research that will help developers more rigorously understand and verify AI-generated software.
The award supports research and education at the intersection of programming languages, software verification and artificial intelligence. As software developers increasingly rely on large language models to generate code, ensuring that AI-produced programs are correct, reliable and secure has become an increasingly important challenge.
Traditional software verification techniques are designed to prove that well-understood programs behave correctly, but they are not well suited to helping developers reason about AI-generated code that may contain subtle defects or inconsistencies. Delaware's research aims to address that challenge by developing new mathematical reasoning techniques that allow developers to explore rigorously and understand programs they only partially understand.
"This project is about building reasoning techniques that are as rigorous as traditional program verification, but designed for the increasingly common scenario where developers need to examine a program they don't fully understand and that might be wrong," Delaware said.
The project builds on ongoing research in Purdue Computer Science's Programming Languages (PurPL) group, a community of programming language researchers that spans the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. As part of PurPL, Delaware and his students develop new methods for software verification and programming language design. The award will support graduate student researchers while creating opportunities to expand undergraduate research and K-12 educational outreach focused on symbolic reasoning and formal methods.
Delaware worked with Jessica Brewer, the K-12 Outreach Coordinator for the Department of Computer Science, to propose a plan to develop and implement K-12 classroom-ready curriculum.
“Brewer has deep experience with what actually works in K-12 classrooms, and she was instrumental in helping shape my K-12 outreach plan,” said Delaware.
“I brought the research side, she brought the outreach expertise, and we refined it into something that's both academically meaningful and practical for real teachers. Having that kind of partner made the education component far stronger than anything I would have written on my own.”
The next phase of the project will focus on developing a unified mathematical framework for reasoning about both correct and incorrect programs, creating trustworthy tools that help developers confidently evaluate AI-generated software before it is deployed.
The collaborative PurPL group spans the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, bringing together researchers across the field from theory to implementation.
The NSF CAREER Award is the National Science Foundation's premier award for early-career faculty. It recognizes researchers who demonstrate the potential to lead impactful research while integrating education and mentoring into their academic careers.
About the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University
Founded in 1962, the Department of Computer Science was created to be an innovative base of knowledge in the emerging field of computing as the first degree-awarding program in the United States. The department continues to advance the computer science industry through research. U.S. News & World Report ranks the department No. 16 and No. 15 overall in undergraduate and graduate computer science, respectively. Graduates of the program are able to solve complex and challenging problems in many fields. Our consistent success in an ever-changing landscape is reflected in the record undergraduate enrollment, increased faculty hiring, innovative research projects, and the creation of new academic programs. Learn more at cs.purdue.edu.