History of Innovation
Established by the Department of Defense (DoD) in 1984, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) began operation in early 1985. Since then, the SEI has shown that it both anticipates and responds to DoD challenges efficiently, effectively, and thoroughly through excellence in research, development, and deployment (RD&D) and technology transition practices.
Going forward, when the DoD seeks answers to incorporate quantum computing, greater automation, more and better approaches for cybersecurity, and to address a host of other over-the-horizon needs, the SEI will be there, too, continuing to ensure that software is a strategic advantage for the DoD.
The stories below offer snapshots of the culture of innovation at the SEI as our researchers and engineers have worked to advance software for national security.
You can also read these stories in the 2025 book History of Innovation at the SEI.
AI for Autonomy Lab
In 2024, the SEI announced the formally established AI for Autonomy Lab to enable expert researchers to study and demonstrate how AI and ML technologies can be used responsibly in autonomous systems.
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DevSecOps Platform-Independent Model
The SEI created this first-of-its-kind model to help organizations in highly regulated environments implement DevSecOps securely using a model-based systems engineering approach.
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Crucible and GHOSTS: Enabling Realistic Cyber Simulations
The SEI released Crucible and GHOSTS, tools that help cyber simulation developers create simulated virtual environments and non-player characters (NPCs).
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Defining the Practice of Managing Technical Debt: From Research to Community
For a decade, the SEI has been at the forefront of shaping a definition of technical debt, forming and executing a research agenda applicable to government and industry, and cultivating a community of practice.
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Automating the Repair of Software Flaws
In 2017, CERT researchers developed tools to automatically detect and repair two common software-coding errors: integer overflows that lead to buffer overflow and reads of stale and potentially sensitive memory.
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Contributing to Developing and Implementing the DoD Vulnerability Discovery Program
Enhancing Computing Power at the Edge
KD-Cloudlet, a tool for implementing tactical cloudlets, springs from years of research on cloud computing at the tactical edge. The SEI makes this tool freely available as part of its transition mission.
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Integrating Early to Prevent Costly Problems
This research developed the SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language standard in 2004, which was chosen for an aerospace initiative in 2008 and used to detect potential integration issues in the Joint Multi-Role helicopter program in 2015.
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Enabling a Stronger Cyber Workforce
For more than 15 years, the SEI has been investing in developing platforms and courseware for DoD and government cyber warrior readiness.
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Building Capability to Defend Against Malware
To analyze malware, the SEI's CERT researchers have developed a suite of tools based on a framework called Pharos, which is built on top of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's ROSE compiler infrastructure.
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Certifying the Software Architect Role
In 2009, the U.S. Army mandated that all PEOs appoint a chief software architect who had earned the Software Architecture Professional Certificate from the SEI (or equivalent).
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Codifying Resilience Practice
After the 9/11 terror attacks, organizations sought greater operational resilience through security and business continuity. The SEI developed the CERT Resilience Management Model to improve operational resilience.
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Leading the Growth of an Architectural Modeling Standard
From its focus on research in architectural modeling and analysis for safety- and mission-critical systems, the SEI became the technical lead for the SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language standard.
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Standardizing More Secure Software
Since forming its Secure Coding Initiative in 2003, the SEI's CERT Division has analyzed and cataloged thousands of software vulnerabilities and discovered that many share the same coding errors.
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Setting a Foundation for Software Architecture
The SEI's Simplex Architecture supports overall safety when a system is composed of components that vary in reliability and safety.
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Bringing Science to Insider Threat Mitigation
For nearly two decades, the SEI's CERT Division has focused on gathering and analyzing data about actual malicious insider acts and potential threats to U.S. critical infrastructures.
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Evaluating System Architecture
To address the need to predict problems before a system has been built, the SEI pioneered the use of scenario-based methods to evaluate software architectures for modifiability and other qualities.
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Transforming Software Quality Assessment
The SEI's publication of the Software Capability Maturity Model in 1991 provided an objective standard for software development and changed the view in government and industry about software quality.
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Building the Master of Software Engineering Curriculum
During the early years of curriculum development in software engineering, the SEI held a workshop for leading software engineering educators to design a recommended curriculum for a software engineering degree.
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Fostering Growth in Professional Cyber Incident Management
The Morris Worm disrupted the nascent Internet in 1988. In its aftermath, DARPA requested that the SEI create a computer emergency response team, and the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) was born.
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