David Lowe

Brief BiographyProfessor David Lowe (BE PhD SMIEEE MACM) is the Director of CRIN (The Centre for Real-Time Information Networks) in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has active research interests in the areas of Web technologies and software engineering. In particular he focuses on integrating real-time distributed systems into the web environment. He also researches in the use of remotely accessible laboratories, wireless sensor networks, and web project specification and scoping. He has published widely in these areas, including three texts (most recently Web Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach, McGraw-Hill, co-authored with Roger Pressman) and more than 140 refereed papers. He is also on numerous Web conference committees and journal editorial boards, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the new ICST Transactions on the Real-World Web, and a Managing Editor of the Journal of Web Engineering. He has undertaken numerous consultancies related to software evaluation, Web development (especially project planning and evaluation) and Web technologies.He is also passionate about teaching, and particularly the role of practice-based engineering education. He has been heavily involved in teaching at all levels (undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional education). He codeveloped and was program director for the innovative Information Systems Engineering graduate programs, and co-developed the joint UTS-Thomson Masters program in Software Engineering. From 2002 to 2008 he was the Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) for the Faculty of Engineering at UTS. He also serves as a Higher Education Generalist on NSW Department of Education Assessment panels. He was the recipient of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education 2001 McGraw Hill New Engineering Educator Award, and won the Paul Thistlewaite award for best paper at the 2000 Australian Web Conference.Research Projects OverviewSupporting co-evolution of business processes and Web systems: In web systems development the organisational needs not only drive the development of the system, but the resultant system typically leads to fundamental changes in the organisations processes and even the core business model. For an optimised system (in terms of both cost and usability) to be developed, the business and the system must co-evolve. This project aims to understand this interplay and provide support for managing it effectively. We will develop models that link system designs to business impacts, and provide techniques and research tools to assess these impacts.Optimisation of Web-based monitoring of real-time systems:Web-based monitoring of time-critical real-time systems is becoming increasingly prevalent. This project is investigating novel architectures (based around synchronisation of client and server state observers) which support more accurate monitoring of these systems.Remotely Accessible Laboratories: This project is primarily designed to support improved learning outcomes from the utilisation of remote laboratories. This will be achieved through the development of evaluation metrics, the evaluation of the factors which affect student learning, and the subsequent development of design and usage recommendations for remote laboratories.