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Name: |
Alan
William BROWN |
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Date/Place of Birth: |
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Nationality: |
British
and |
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Home Address: |
(Available
on Request) |
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Office Address: |
IBM
Rational software, RTP, |
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E-mail Address: |
work:
awbrown@us.ibm.com |
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Personal Home Page: |
Course Development and Teaching
·
Internationally
recognized leader in the fields of Enterprise Application Development tools and
Software Engineering Environments.
·
Experience
in both industry and academia, holding a key strategic position in IBM and an
Adjunct Professor position at NC State University.
·
Established
record of attracting research funds from Government and industry.
·
Experienced
Leader of internationally-recognized research and development teams in the area
of software development tools and environments, and object-oriented systems.
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Author
of 5 books, editor of 3 further books, and author of over 50 papers published
in refereed journals or conference proceedings.
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Invited
program committee member for numerous international software engineering
conferences including the International Conference on Software Engineering
series, and the International Workshops on Computer-Aided Software Engineering
series.
Ph.D in Computing Science. Thesis title: "A View
Mechanism for an Integrated Project Support Environment".
B.Sc. in Computational Science. Graduated with a First Class
Honours Degree.
In April 2006 I was appointed as Adjunct Professor at NC State University. In this role I act as advisor to computer science faculty and students on software engineering topics, I was a co-founder of NC State's Center for Open Software Engineering (COSE), and I assist in the revision of software engineering curricula.
Catapulse was a
My role at Catapulse was within the Business Development
organization. I worked to position and evangelize Catapulse as an effective
software development platform for large corporations, ISVs, and small teams.
This involved analyzing industry-standard software development practices,
working with partners to understand how Catapulse technology can be combined
effectively with theirs to create a winning go-to-market solution, working
internally with Catapulse development teams and product managers to influence
their decisions and directions, and liaising with Catapulse management on
business and market strategy.
Catapulse was acquired by Rational Software in February 2001.
Computer associates is the world's third largest software
organization with over 20,000 employees and annual revenue in excess of $6B. In
April 2000 they purchased Sterling Software. From that date I assumed a role as
a Vice President for Research and Development for Computer Associates
responsible for application development products. The products for which I was
responsible generated annual revenues in excess of $250M.
As VP of Research and Development I was the primary representative
for the technology provided by Application Development products. In that
position I was responsible for advanced technology projects, and for the
presentation of new technology directions to analysts, media, and the field. My
responsibilities included taking a leading role in defining the technical
strategy and vision for the future of application development products,
assessing technology and market directions in e-Business and e-Commerce, and
assisting with industry partnership and acquisition strategies. This was
particularly important as we evolve our products to support enterprise
application development in the Internet age supporting e-Business practices.
These are enabled by a component-based approach to software development and
maintenance, called Component-Based Development (CBD).
Particular responsibilities included managing research activities across
the organization. I advised on specifications for new software products and the
future direction of enterprise application and component-based software
development products. I was also responsible for representing the application
development products and technical strategy at external events, interacting
with customers on advanced software development practices, working with press
and analysts in the software industry, and for positioning the products in the
wider CBD community.
I led the Object Technology Branch in its investigation of
advanced research and development products. Our role was to advise all
divisions of TI in the current capabilities of various object technologies,
build advanced prototypes in key areas, and consult with them in transitioning
these technologies into routine practice.
Specific technologies investigated included various
implementations of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), the
Java language and environments, and Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM).
In all of these areas we developed technology prototypes, concentrating on
exploring their viability in complex, mission-critical application domains such
as manufacturing contol, telecommunications, and financial management. Our work
was viewed as influential in a making a number of critical technology
decision within various divisions of TI.
I held this position with TI until Texas Instruments Software was
purchased by Sterling Software on
For most of this period I was project leader for the CASE
Environments project. As such, I was responsible for a research group of 10
people, attracting and managing an annual budget of almost $2M. About half of
this was a result of a competitive internal R&D bidding process while the
rest was from external contracts attracted from particular government and
industry clients.
My responsibilities included technical leadership in the CASE
environments area by defining technical direction of the work, attracting
funding, coordinating our work with the rest of the Institute, and presenting
technical accomplishments and plans to internal and external sponsors.
My technical duties and responsibilities varied widely, and
included membership of an audit team determining the future of the Federal
Aviation Administration's (FAA's) advanced automation system program, providing
briefings at the Pentagon to Department of Defense decision makers, and
advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense on U.S. Government policy in
the area of CASE and software engineering.
During my time at the SEI I addressed some of the issues of how to
assemble and integrate commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components from various
vendors. The aim was to develop techniques, guidelines, and assessment
instruments that allow an organization to understand the problems of COTS tool
integration, have realistic expectations from CASE technology, introduce
integrated CASE technology in a cost-effective way, and be able to assess the
impact of that technology when it is in place.
I worked extensively with many kinds of technologies, including
implementations of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA),
implementations of the Portable Common Tools Environment (PCTE), scripting
languages such as the Tool Command Language (Tcl), and many tools such as
Teamwork, Software through Pictures, ObjectMaker, Software Testworks, and so
on.
Aditionally, I also was an invited advisor on a number of
high-level strategic advisory boards directing government standards and
practices for software engineering within the Air Force, Navy, and Department
of Commerce.
Together with continuing my research within the Department in the
areas of databases, Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE), and Software
Engineering Environments (SEEs), my main teaching commitments included design
and delivery of an advanced database option for final year undergraduates, and
a fourth year (MEng) undergraduate course on Integrated Project Support
Environments (IPSE's). Further teaching duties included an introductory
computing course for conversion MSc. students, and an undergraduate
introduction to databases course.
My administration duties included supervision of undergraduate and
postgraduate students, and Secretary of the Board of Examiners for the MSc.
course.
During this period I was responsible for supervising a number of
PhD students and research associates. These were funded by a number of research
grants awarded to Dr P. Hitchcock and myself.
In the first project we were awarded the sum of approximately
75,000 pounds over three years by the Admiralty Research Establishment (ARE) to
fund three separate research proposals in the areas of integration of knowledge
and databases, object-oriented database systems, and future database system
architectures.
Following that award we began three projects funded by the
Information Engineering Directorate (IED). The ORCA project carried out work on
object-oriented requirements capture and analysis. This was a joint proposal
with Logica of Cambridge and Data Dictionary Systems Ltd. The total funding for
the project was over 800,000 pounds. The SAZ project investigated the
integration of formal and structured software development methods. This project
was funded to the level of 130,000 pounds. It was `uncled' by the CCTA,
computing advisors to the U.K. Government. The PROM project investigated reuse
techniques in design and analysis phases of software development. Funding was
initially for one year, later extended for a further two years.
A member of the Computing Laboratory, working on the Information
Base side of the Aspect project. Aspect was an Alvey-funded project whose
objectives were research into, and prototype development of an Integrated
Project Support Environment (IPSE). The project partners were the Universities
of York and
In the light of this work, the PTI specification was revised for
its final publication at the end of the main phase of the project in August
1987, and a second prototype of the system completed by this date, and
demonstrated at the Alvey Conference in July 1987.
An extension to the main project was completed, concentrating on
integration and evaluation of the work developed in the first three years, and
producing a third demonstration prototype.
As part of the first year of my Ph.D I followed the advanced M.Sc
course in Computing Systems and Software Design (CSSD), taking part in courses
on Computer Architecture, Database Systems, VLSI Design, Distributed Systems,
Software Engineering, and others.
As a postgraduate student within the Computing Lab., my duties included
demonstrating and supervision of undergraduate students on Pascal programming
Language courses, and marking of their project work.
Worked for a computer consultancy organization developing a range
of information systems running on DEC PDP-11 and Vax machines.
I have had extensive administrative and managerial experience in
my different roles. For example, in my senior technical roles with IBM and
Rational Software I have managed teams of people of various sizes, and have had
administrative and budgetary responsibilities for these teams. My
responsibilities have involved advice and guidance in all areas of research and
future strategy. As a result, I have extensive experience with administrative
responsibility for supporting the defined budgets, schedules, and plans across
development labs in 4 geographic locations, within the North American sales
areas, and in worldwide Marketing. In addition, at various times during the past
10 years I have had teams of up to 30 people reporting directly to me on
specific research and development projects.
At the SEI my administrative duties included overall
responsibility for 10 people, with an annual budget of almost $2M. This
involved acquiring funds from internal and external agencies, negotiating
deliverables with customers, budgeting, approving purchase requests, conducting
periodic performance reviews, and hiring of new employees.
While at the University of York my administrative duties included
Secretary of the Board of Examiners for the MSc course, and assistant
administrator of the MSc course. I was also a member of the MSc Steering
Committee. As a consequence of these positions, I held an important role in
ensuring the smooth running of the MSc course.
See the
attached bibliography.
In January 1998 I was
awarded a grant of $1.6 million over three years from the US Department of
Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to carry out
advanced development in advanced enterprise level component-based systems. I
was the principal author of the proposal, and lead the technology effort to
carry out this work.
I was awarded the
British Computer Society CASE Specialist Group award for the best paper at the
8th International Conference on Software Technology and Engineering Practice,
July 1997 for my paper entitled "CASE in the 21st Century: Challenges Facing
Established CASE Vendors".
At the 2nd IEEE
International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems in October
1996, my paper on "Engineering of Component-Based Systems" was given
an "Outstanding Paper" award.
In September 1993 I was
awarded a "Certificate of Appreciation" by the US. Navy's Next
Generation Computing Resources (NGCR) committee for my contribution from
February 1991 to September 1993 to their Project Support Environment Standards
Working Group.
While at the SEI I
received three internal achievement awards for my achievements on particular
contracts with SEI customers. This involves recognition by the customers for
excellence in research and technology transition.
In April 1989 I was
awarded a Short-Term Fellowship with British Telecom Research Laboratories at
Martlesham Heath. Work on the Fellowship took place during the summer of 1989
with British Telecom's IPSE Research Group looking at the possible impact of
object-oriented database technology on IPSE systems within British Telecom. On
successful completion of the Fellowship a number of reports were submitted
which summarized the work carried out.
I was an advisory
editor for a series of computer science books for Chapman and Hall publishers.
In this capacity I reviewed manuscript, provided advice to the publishers, and
communicated and encouraged potential book authors.
I am continually asked
to review draft texts for Prentice-Hall, McGraw-Hill, Addison Wesley, and
Chapman and Hall publishers, and numerous technical papers for the IEEE
Computing and Software journals, the ACM Computing Surveys journal, the
Software Engineering Journal, Information and Software Technology, and
University Computing.
I have been an invited
program committee member for a number of internationally-recognized
conferences, including the International Software Engineering Environments
conference series, and the International Workshops on Computer-Aided Software
Engineering series.
Available separately.