Wing sees her job as making esoteric research issues real, immediate and relevant to users. "Today in security, we are patching systems and fighting viruses and worms and doing source code analysis using techniques that the basic research community invented 20 years ago, or even longer than that," she said.

Consequently, users "are basically putting Band-Aids on our software and trying to build better intrusion-detection systems," said Wing, while the basic research needed to protect against future threats isn't being done.

The advanced programming languages now used, such as Java and C+, all evolved from basic programming language research in the late 1970s, said Wing. "That's where we are now."

To understand how research can create new things, Wing points to Google Inc. Its stems from development of a page rank algorithm, which "is just an instance of basic research."

There are many fundamental areas that need to be addressed, according to Wing. For instance, software code today has bugs and vulnerabilities that make it susceptible to attacks and crashes. Rebooting an operating system is one thing, but she points to embedded systems, such as those surgically implanted in people to help with heart function. "Why should we be putting up with such unreliable systems," said Wing.