<p>Considering the pervasiveness of software (and the likeliness of that to increase), I've become very interested in "Software Engineering" as a field, and would hope to one day go to grad school in a Software Engineering focused research group.</p>
<p>However, I'm not sure whether the top universities (such as Stanford, Berkeley, U of Washington, Harvard, MIT, U of Illinois, etc) have such a program, and was wondering if "Software Engineering" really is considered a valid academic research area, or whether it itself is a not very promising, everything-to-be-discovered-has-been-discovered, kind of field. If so, then could someone tell me how research in Compilers and/or Programming Languages is relevant to what I'm seeking?</p>
<p>**So to sum it up, the questions I have are:<a href="1">/b</a> Do the top schools in CS (and maybe engineering) have research groups dedicated to "Software Engineering" like they do for other fields (like OS, Data Mining, etc)?</p>
<p>(2) If Software Engineering is not really a good or available option in many places, what's the closest that comes to it?</p>