List of Members
Institute Name: Macquarie University, Joint Research Centre for Advanced Systems Engineering
Description: The Joint Research Centre undertakes collaborative interdisciplinary pure and applied research in various aspects of software and systems engineering. These activities involve staff from Macquarie University, the CSIRO, industry and academic partners. The Centre also undertakes contract research and development, provides professional consultancy and training services, offers a research environment conducive to high-quality post-graduate training and acts as an expert resource centre.
The Centre's research programmes are predicated on the notion that Information Technology (IT) - the ever expanding range of computing and communications technologies - plays only an enabling role in the realisation of the systems eventually used to achieve a user's or a customer's particular defined end. The 'building' of IT based systems involves, at its core, the still emerging discipline of software engineering, as well as other more traditional areas of engineering and science, and a number of important non-technical management, social and organisational disciplines. In recognising this, the Centre supports a number of generic enabling research themes, within a broad 'umbrella' rationale of systems engineering, which are driven by applications-oriented research requirements. These themes are: the systems engineering 'process' itself; process improvement, including quantitative methods; software engineering methods and tools; and socio-technical issues in systems engineering, including technology transfer. Undertaking industry-based 'demonstrator' projects within and across these thematic areas is part of the Centre's strategic plan, as is the establishment of a software and systems engineering experience database in order to support the codification of knowledge in what is still a relatively young engineering discipline. The Centre is a member of the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN) and the Australian Software Metrics Association (ASMA).
The Centre's research not only supports the above themes, but also constructively
straddles them in order to link together the diverse intellectual strands
that together make up the difficult but commercially important systems
engineering process. The projects Application of Graphical Formalisms
to Software Development, New Paradigms for Software Design CASE Tools,
Meta-CASE Toolset, Requirements Elicitation and Modelling and Software
Process Modelling involve the application of graphical and other
formalisms to critical problems in software engineering, while effective
co-design of hardware and software is the concern of Hardware-Software
Co-Design. Software Quality-Assurance Tools, Software Engineering
Experimentation and Software Measurement Toolset (SQUATter) address
the difficult areas of process assessment and improvement, with the main
focus on quantitative methods, experimentation and tools. Interactive
Multi-Media address fundamental issues arising in the implementation of
interactive, multi-media based distributed information systems. The
implications of the organisational and social dimensions in defining, building,
using and evolving a system are explored in Socio-Technical Issues in Software
and Systems Engineering. Human-Computer Interaction explores, inter alia,
the issue of reativity in software design, user interfaces for computer-based
musical composition and GUI libraries.
Researchers associated with the project:
Professor Ray Offen
Dr. Aditya Ghose
Ms. Didar Zowghi
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Didar Zowghi BSc(Hons) MSc MACS MIEEE
Nationality: Australian
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Didar Zowghi BSc(Hons) MSc MACS MIEEE holds a joint lectureship positionin Computing at the CSIRO-Macquarie University Joint Research Centre for Advanced Systems Engineering (JRCASE). She is currently in the process ofcompleting her PhD in the area of Requirements Engineering at theMacquarie University - JRCASE. She has worked as an Analyst in the computing industry both in the UK and Australia for several years Prior to taking her academic positions first at Macquarie University and later on as a lecturer in computing and information systems at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean for 5 years.
In March 1995 she initiated and launched a world-wide electronic discussion mailing list on Software Requirements Engineering (SRE). She has managed, moderated and maintained the archives of this list over the past two years. It has close to 600 subscribers of about 50% industry, 50% academics and has been recognised to have made outstanding contributions to the dissemination of information and research results amoungst the RE commuity.
In 1996 in collaboration with researchers at Monash and Swinbourn Universities she initiated the first Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering and she served on its Program Committee. She is the Program Chair for the second Australian Workshop on Requirements Engineering to be held at Macquarie University later on this year. She is on the Program Committee of the Third IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering to be held in Colorado Springs, USA in April 1998.
Selected Publications:
Zowghi D., "Software Requirements Elicitation", Proceedings of the First JRCASE/Flinders University Collaborative Research Workshop on Software Engineering, Victor Harbour SA, 1994, JRCASE Research Report 94/2.
Zowghi D., "Sotware Requirements Engineering", Proceedings of the Second JRCASE/Flinders University Collaborative Research Workshop on Software Engineering, Sydney, 1995.
Zowghi D., Ghose A., Peppas P., "A Framework for Reasoning about Requirements Evolution" Proceedings of the 4th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI96), Cairns, Australia, August 1996.
Zowghi D., Offen R., "A Logical Framework for Modeling and Reasoning
about the Evolution of Requirements", Proceedings of the Third IEEE International
Symposium on Requirements Engineering, (ISRE'97), January 1997, pp 247-257,
Annapolis, USA.
Name: Professor Ray Offen BSc PhD FIEE CEng FIREE FIEAust CPEng
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Ray Offen is Director of the CSIRO-Macquarie University Joint Research Centre for Advanced Systems Engineering in Sydney, Australia. He holds the Chair of Information Technology at Macquarie University in June 1991 and is Honorary Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Division of Mathematical and Information Sciences. His previous posts include a joint Professorship in the Electronic and Electrical Engineering and the Computer Science Departments at University College London, Assistant Technical Director of The General Electric Company plc, UK, Operations Manager of Imperial Software Technology Ltd, UK, Manager of the Computer Systems Research Laboratory at GEC Research Ltd, UK and Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Selected Publications:
R. J. Offen and V. Aronov, "A Model-Based Approach to Software Measurement",
Proceedings of the First Australian Conference on Software Metrics, Sydney,
Australia, 18-19 November, 1993, Australian Software Metrics Association,
pp. 118 - 127.
R. J. Offen, "The Hypernode Meta-Model as a Basis for Software Process Modelling", Proceedings of the 17'th Annual Computer Science Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, 19-21 January, 1994, pp. 591 - 600.
R. J. Offen and G. Xia, "Extending the Scope of Software Measurement and Experimentation: Some Important Methodological Issues", Proc. Australian Conference on Software Metrics, Sydney, November 1995, ASMA, pp. 78 - 82.
W. Chen and R. J. Offen, "Control Theory: Does it Have Relevance for the Software Development Process?", Proc. Australian Conference on Software Metrics, Sydney, November 1995, ASMA, pp. 94 - 102.
G. Xia and R. J. Offen, "A Case Study of a Software Metrics Program in a Systems Engineering Company", Proc. Australian Conference on Software Metrics, Sydney, November 1995, ASMA, pp. 157 - 167.
R. Offen, "Is Software Engineering Really Engineering?", Proc. Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, Brisbane, December 1995, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 520 - 521.
D. Zowghi and R. J. Offen, "A Logical Framework for Modelling and Reasoning
about the Evolution of Requirements", Proc. Third IEEE International Symposium
on Requirements Engineering, Annapolis, Md., USA, January 6-10 1997, pp
247-257.
R. J Offen and D. R. Jeffery, "A Model-Based Approach to Establishing
and Maintaining a Software Measurement Programme", IEEE Software, 14-2,
March/April 1997, pp 45-53.
Name: Aditya Ghose MSc PhD
Nationality: Indian
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Aditya Ghose is Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research interests include requirements engineering, reverse engineering of legacy systems as well as default reasoning, belief revision and constraint solving, and their applications to problems in software engineering, lanning and induction. He holds a Ph.D. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He has held research appointments with the Knowledge Systems Group at the University of Sydney and with the School of Computing and Information Technology at Griffith University, Brisbane and has been been a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo.
Selected Publications:
D. Zowghi, A. K. Ghose and P. Peppas, 1996. A framework for reasoning about requirements evolution. In Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cairns, Australia, August, 1996.
A. Sattar, A. K. Ghose and R. G. Goebel, 1996. Specifying over-constrained
problems in default logic. In M. Jampel, E. Freuder and M. Maher (eds.),
Over-constrained systems. Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer
Science.
A. K. Ghose, S. Padmanabhuni and R. G. Goebel, 1996. Incremental learning with default representations. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Inducing Complex Representations, held in conjunction with the Fourth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cairns, Australia, August, 1996.
S. Padmanabhuni, J.-H. You and A. K. Ghose, 1996. A framework for learning
constraints. In Proceedings of the
Workshop on Inducing Complex Representations, held in conjunction with
the Fourth Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
Cairns, Australia, August, 1996.
A. K. Ghose, 1995. Practical belief change. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department
of Computing Science, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Canada.
A. Sattar and A. K. Ghose, 1995. Experiments in belief revision. In
Proceedings of the 8th Australian Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Canberra, Australia, November,
1995.
A. Sattar, A. K. Ghose and R. G. Goebel, 1995. Specifying over-constrained
problems in default logic (Preliminary report).
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Over-Constrained Systems, held in
conjunction with the First International Conference on the Principles and
Practice of Constraint Programming, Cassis, France.
A. K. Ghose, Abdul Sattar and R. G. Goebel, 1994. Default reasoning as partial constraint satisfaction. In Proceedings of the 7th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Armidale, Australia, November, 1994.
A. K. Ghose, P. O. Hadjinian, A. Sattar, J-H. You and R. G. Goebel, 1993. Iterated belief change: A preliminary report. In Proceedings of the 6th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Melbourne, Australia, November, 1993.
A. K. Ghose, A. Sattar and R. G. Goebel, 1993. Pragmatic belief change:
Computational efficiency and approximability.
In Proceedings of the AI-93 Workshop on Belief Revision (held in conjunction
with the 6th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence). Melbourne,
Australia, November, 1993.
A. K. Ghose and R. G. Goebel, 1992. Default reasoning as belief change:
A rationale. In Proceedings of the Second Pacific Rim International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Ms Didar Zowghi
Address: CSIRO-Macquarie University Joint Research Centre for System Engineering (JRCASE), North Ryde, New South Wales, 2109, Australia
Telephone number: +61 2 98509569
Telefax number: +61 2 98509551 or 98509102
EMail: didar@mpce.mq.edu.au
List of Members