I don't know... There is a whole DOSBox wish-list thread somewhere with info things that might someday make it into DOSBox. Some more likely than others (those that directly affects game-play) and some more unlikely (like that ever popular issue of hibernating a running DOSBox session).

Operating system, distributed systems... Hmmm.....

Hibernating a running DOSBox (in a cross-platform manner mind you) is OS related. Feasible? Maybe.

DOSBox is not very well geared towards the future with multiple CPU cores. There was a recent thread about trying to multi-thread (multi-core?) the video/audio-recording feature, so that one CPU could do the emulation, while another took care of the recording. I don't know if that will be a possible project?

There is also the whole dynamic re-compiler thing. Would it be possible to farm out re-compilation of random segments of code to a 2nd core? Ready to be utilized by the main core if needed?

aside from making a dynamic recompiler for a system that doesn't have one currently, there aren't many large single focus targets in DOSBox.
Savestates is a big one, but this requires far to much knowledge about everything and I actually want to code it myself.

I found the wish-list. Wow, looks like a lot of work. I agree, I don't see many large single focus targets. Even so, I would love to help out with some of the items on that list, if I can. I will talk to my professor and see what he thinks about this. Maybe I could do multiple smaller scale improvements and use them for my paper. One of the professor's suggestions were to find a open source application and see what improvements I can bring, so this might be possible.

please don't forget that the wishlist is user created and doesn't need to agree with what we want as devs.

I see... even so, is there any way I can help?

What are you interested in? Doing something new, trying to figure out and
document/try to improve something, work on something architecture/cpu
specific (recompiler).

What level of knowledge do you have in programming/in working with dosbox
and dosbox sources?

As I said I am only a 2nd year student so I believe I currently have little more than the basic knowledge of programming (asm, c, c++, java) as for working with dosbox sources, I haven't until now. But that doesn't mean I am not willing or able of learning and working. I may be new at this, but we all started out somewhere, right? Besides, the whole point of the thesis is to do research outside the basic knowledge taught in classes and apply it in some form.

I was thinking I should try either improve in some way the already existing source or try to do something new with it. Maybe try to bring some of those features in the wish-list. But since you say it doesn't reflect the developer's wishes then I believe it would be better to find some way to help and contribute that would mirror your wishes. Maybe this way I could take some of the load off your backs. Or perhaps you have some features in mind but never gotten around to implementing them because of their low position on the priority list. Let me know and I'll do my best to try to bring them to life.

Also, this thesis is due in exactly 12 months. That's a lot of time to learn new things.

I know google released NativeClient (Their version of ActiveX). It would be neat to see DOSBox running in that.

Of course it's been found to be just as vulnerable but it would still be neat.