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Type inference and related research...



Hello everyone.

I am a university student in Armenia, preparing for research in the
field of type systems. Being new to research, I am seeking some help
from the scientific community, whose member I will hopefully become
one day. I have two problems. The first problem is figuring out a
direction to do research in (I mean in this particular field), or at
least obtaining a list of open problems and vaguely investigated
areas. And the second problem is how to view "all" the work previously
done in a topic that interests me, with Internet being the only source
of information. I mean is there a way of having a list of works and
some sort of guarantee that it is complete, is CiteSeer authoritative
enough?

I am acquainted with the subject of type systems in general, and
especially interested in polymorphic type inference and related
topics. I would be very grateful if someone tells me about any poorly
investigated problems in these fields. Maybe there's a particular
problem arisen from some recent investigations that needs to be
solved, or any newly evolving field to be examined. Since this is my
first research in this area, the problem should not be a large or very
sophisticated one, just something worth doing.

I have been looking for a particular direction of research for a
while, and have found a few so far. One such direction is so-called
soft typing with its possible variations, another one is alternative
or complementary (to Milner) methods of inferring types. I have found
out that these topics are more or less developed. I do have some more
problems in mind, such as investigating the class of typeable
(type-inferrable) terms, or trying to apply typing or type inference
methods in some more traditional fields, but I have little knowledge
about any work done in these directions. I would like to know how
realistic is doing research in the mentioned directions.

All-in-all, I need a direction to do my research project.
Please help me out. Any advice will be of great value for me.

Thank you for your time and attention.
With great respect,
Vahram Avagyan.