STEAM undertakes a variety of research projects within the domain of advanced software systems with a view to applying engineering discipline to software development, ensuring that software products will meet organizational, financial, marketplace, and technical requirements. Like other fields of engineering, software engineering (and STEAMS interests) are a hybrid of scientific, technical, measurement and management principles.

While STEAM is active in all four of the principle IT domains (Embedded, Desktop, Web-based, Mobile), it is currently most active in the domain of web-based applications or web engineering. Web applications have characteristics that make it different from traditional software and information systems. Web engineering focuses on the methodologies, techniques and tools for Web application design, development, evolution, and evaluation. Web engineering should not strictly be considered a subset of software engineering. While Web Engineering uses software engineering principles, it encompasses new approaches, methodologies, tools, techniques, and guidelines to meet the unique requirements of Web-based applications. However, perhaps someday, the two will merge as traditional systems tend to incorporate web-based components on an increasingly regular basis.

Regardless of the domain, previous, Current and Future projects are likely to fall within one or more of these domains..