Case Summary:

An expert in software engineering from Bangladesh came to our firm for his National Interest Waiver application. He held an M.Sc in the area and was employed as a graduate student researcher at the time. Once we knew the basics of his career, we had our job cut out for us. So we began by collecting his academic and professional documents and from within them the information we needed to write his petition. These factors were:

• His proposed endeavor is to continue his research on building novel tools in order to prevent source code plagiarism in software development, protect software copyright and licensing, reduce software maintenance costs by creating new software architecture analysis frameworks, and build infrastructure that assists researchers and software engineers in conducting large-scale software analysis experiments.
• Thus, his research endeavor is of great importance because it supports efforts to enhance ways to fight software plagiarism in both academic and professional environments.
• His proposed endeavor also has broad implications for the United States since there are many benefits to the U.S. software development sector, from computer applications or programs security and related services to office and collaborative-based job creation.
• Due to its clear national importance, his research has in fact been supported with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications, and Information Technology – ICT Division, Bangladesh.
• Not only this but his work was also recognized and praised by 4 recommendations made by experts who knew his work. One of them said:

“[The client] is carrying out admirable research in software engineering. He is responsible for the creation of new applications with undeniable usefulness to other researchers working in his field. Software props up organizations and often determines their productivity and capability to expand. In fact, enterprise software, software whose purpose is to guide and improve business needs, constitutes the largest portion of the global software market. At the very core of the improvement of software are the researchers and scientists working behind the scenes. [The client] works tirelessly to improve software engineering research and development, benefitting software engineers and thus organizations both at home and abroad.”

• Due to his knowledge and expertise in code clone/software plagiarism detection, software analytics, automated software engineering, empirical software engineering, and programming languages, he has been regularly invited to conduct peer reviews for authoritative journals in the field where he has completed 8 reviews to date.
• His software engineering research has resulted in 4 first-authored, peer-reviewed conference papers as well as 1 software repository published on GitHub.
• These publications have also been cited a total of 13 times according to Google Scholar, thereby demonstrating that these publications are widely recognized and relied upon in the field of software engineering.

Additionally, he has pursued research directly related to his endeavor of building novel tools in order to prevent source code plagiarism in software development for 5 years, which has given him the necessary experience to continue his work here in the U.S. So we were certain that his approval would come through without an RFE. We are glad that we could be of assistance to him in this case and we wish him the best for the future.