Developing a software tool in the context of study for a PhD gives you the opportunity to further hone the software development skills exercised by the Software Engineering Group Practical. The software which you develop will be open source, freely given to the scientific research community and to anyone else who wishes to use it and benefit from it. The work is technically challenging and intellectually stimulating. In a funded PhD place you have a great deal of freedom to shape your own project and steer your own research programme.
Research in computer science can be based on solid theory. Theoretical computer science is at its most productive when it produces high-quality tools which non-theoreticians can use to help them with the practical problems which they face. Tools such Prism and Dizzy are applied by researchers working in a wide range of scientific areas. Dizzy is applied in Systems Biology where researchers model biological reactions on a computer instead of making them happen for real in laboratory animals. This type of research has potential benefits for the faster discovery of more effective therapies, with attendant benefits for human and animal health.
Open-source projects such as these, and others, need contributions from talented and skillful developers, helping good tools to get better. A recent trend in the area is to move standalone Java tools onto the Eclipse platform, for better integration with other analysers. If you would be interested in acquiring expertise in the Eclipse platform and working with EMF, Ecore and the SWT then why not apply for a PhD place in the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science?
Please contact me if you are interested or have questions, or would like to meet some of our current PhD students. More details about a PhD are on-line at http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd.html. The application procedure is described at http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply.html.