LONDON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp has stepped up its ties to academia, pledging the funding and know-how to train students at the University of Leeds to write bug-free software, the company said on Friday.

The announcement comes amid repeated complaints by some security experts that Microsoft's ubiquitous software programs, a favorite target for hackers and virus writers, remain vulnerable to intrusion.

A year ago Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, launched an initiative called "Trustworthy Computing," to improve the security of its programs ranging from Windows operating systems to computer server applications.

In January, though, a tenacious computer worm called "SQL Slammer" attacked computer servers running on Microsoft software, triggering a series of Internet outages and system breakdowns that drew fresh ire from the security industry.

Over the past year, Microsoft has worked hard to stamp out software glitches. It has sent 11,000 of its code writers, testers and programmers through training to better identify potential holes in computer source code.

Under the new initiative, Microsoft will train instructors at the University of Leeds in northern England in these bug-testing techniques. They will then incorporate them into specialized classes beginning next January.

"We need to raise awareness of education on security issues, mainly in writing secure code," Stuart Okin, Microsoft's UK chief security officer told Reuters on Friday. "What hasn't existed until now is specialist courses to teach good practices for writing secure code and testing it."

Microsoft has a long-held policy of providing billions of dollars worth of grants, research money and software tools to institutions and universities each year.

Okin said this program differed in that Leeds academics are free to use Microsoft materials and money to draw up the curriculum in any way they see fit.

Also, Microsoft has granted the university all intellectual property rights over the program, and has given it the freedom to distribute or sell code-writing course materials to other universities.

Dr. Nick Efford, a director at the University of Leeds School of Computing, said he expected 100 university students to take the course beginning next year.

Efford said specialized courses in bug testing and secure code writing were uncommon at universities, and that he hoped to export the program to other institutions of higher learning.

He said he hoped the new curriculum would usher in a new generation of more secure software, but added that it would not mean an end to computer viruses and worms.

"That's an ideal that will never be realized. Software is incredibly complex and people make mistakes," he said. "But there are a number of problems we can train programmers to avoid."