Biographical Sketch:

Education:

 BS Math, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, 1987
 MS Computer Science, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1993
 PhD Computer Science, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO, 2009

Research Interests:
    I am always interested in good students seeking advice for a master's project, thesis, or a doctoral dissertation.  In general, and before I decide to advise a student (thesis or dissertation) you must take both CS 351 and CS451 and you must be in the top 20% of the class. Stop by if you have any questions.
     I have interest in the following areas:

• Empirical Software Engineering
• Design Patterns
• Formal Methods
• Architecture and Design of Software Systems
• Software Frameworks
• Software Testing

    Possible Projects, Thesis and Dissertation Research Ideas:

• Visualization techniques for grime and rot in software designs
• Understanding the Cross Coupling evolution of design patterns
• Design Pattern recognition and specification
• Replication of empirical case studies and negative case studies
• Empirical studies of object oriented systems to measure quality
• Creating pattern level measures to track the evolution of design patterns
• How do package dependencies evolve in software systems (macro and micro point of view)
• An automated Eclipse plug-in to check the structural compliance of design patterns against RBML (a description language)
• Development of behavioral RBML models

    I am also working with the department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences designing frameworks to support ecological modeling.  The latter is an excellent opportunity for students interested in applied computer science.

• Computational Ecology Research Group (CERG)

Courses Taught:

• Software Engineering I (CS 351)
• Software Engineering II (CS 451)
• Undergraduate Research / Creative Activity Instruction (CS 489)

Professional Activities:

• IEEE, ACM Member
• Upsilon Pi Epsilon Society
• Member of the Numerical Intelligent Systems Laboratory (NISL). A collaboration with Johns Hopkins University
• Member of the Montana State University Advisory Board

Selected Publications:

• “Comparison of JSON and XML Data Interchange Formats: A Case Study". 22^nd International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering, CAINE ‘09, San Francisco, CA, November 2009.
• “Decay and Grime Buildup in Evolving Object Oriented Design Patterns”.  PhD. Dissertation, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, May 2009.
• “Testing Consequences of Grime Buildup in Object Oriented Design Patterns”.  1^st ACM-IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, ICST ’08, Lillehammer, Norway, April 2008.
• “How Software Designs Decay: A Pilot Study of Pattern Evolution”.  1^st ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM ’07, Madrid, Spain, September 2007.
• “Case Study: A Tool Centric Approach for Fault Avoidance in Microchip Designs”.  16^th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, SEDE ’07, Las Vegas, NV, July 2007.
• “The Evolution of FreeBSD and Linux”. 5^th ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, ISESE ’06, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2006.
• “An Implicit Representation of Chordal Comparability Graphs in Linear Time”. 32^nd International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG ’06, Bergen, Norway, June 2006.
• “Scan and Detection Systems and Methods”. Defensive Publication US 2005-0204321 A1, US Patent and Trademark Office, September 2005.
• “Semi Greedy Algorithm for Finding Connectivity in Microchip Physical Layouts”. 16^th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering, CAINE ‘03, Las Vegas, NV, November 2003.
• “An Object Oriented Mechanism for Reporting Events in Scan Based Traversals of Microchip Physical Layout data”. Patent Pending.  Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, CO, Disclosed 2002.
• “A Method For Linking Non Object Oriented Data Models to Object Oriented Data Models Using A Technique To Achieve Zero-Size Mapping”. French Patent (European Union) 0201628, granted 3/11/05.  Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, CO, Disclosed 2001.
• “DMI Technology”. InterWorks ‘99 Systems Administration Conference, Chicago, IL, 1999.
• “An Emergent Architecture for Use in Navigational Planning and Environment Learning”.  Master’s thesis and ACM Computer Science Conference Poster presentation, Indianapolis, IN, 1993.

Presentations:

• “Software Decay and Grime Buildup in Evolving OO Design Patterns”. University of Wisconsin La Crosse, La Crosse, Wisconsin, March 2009.
• “Software Decay and Grime”. Montana State University, Invited Seminar Talk, Bozeman, MT, October 2007.
• “Interviewing and Researching Employers”. Montana State University, Employer Workshop for students, Three Forks, MT, February 2007.
• “Resume writing and Networking with Employers”. Montana State University, Employer Workshop for students, Three Forks, MT, February 2006.
• “Applying the Flipper Technology to System Management Tasks”. Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, CO, 1997.
• “Flipper: A Model Based Reasoning Approach To Systems Management”. Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1996.
• “Life of a Software Engineer”. Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1995.
• “Distributed Computing Environment Configuration”. US West customer visit to Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, CO, 1993.
• “Dynamic Path Planning In Sensor Based Terrain Acquisition”. Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1992.
• “Outstars In Neural Networks”. Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1991.

Support:

• Montana State University. Co-PI. “Vehicle Level Reasoning System,” The Boeing Company/NASA Ames Research Center, Aviation Safety Program Office(ARMD NRA NNH09ZEA001N-IVHM1). US$208,106. Summer 2009.  Awarded
• Montana State University. Co-PI. “Measurement and Simulation of Ecosystem Dynamics Across Stream Networks: An Interdisciplinary Multi-scale Approach,”  A proposal to address interdisciplinary research priorities outlined in the NSF’s letter to colleagues entitled Multi-scale Modeling (MSM, NSF 09-032) and Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC, NSF 09-030). US$7495. Summer 2009.
• Hewlett Packard Co.  PI. “Equipment grant for the IT department at Montana State University,” US$42000. Fall Semester 2008.
• Intel. PI.  “Small Grant General Fund for the Association and Computing Machinery (ACM) at Colorado State University,” US$2000. Fall Semester 2007.