Institute Name: The City University, School of InformaticsDescription: The School of Informatics at City University comprises the Departments of Computer Science, of Business Computing, and of Information Sciences together with the Centre for Software Reliability. There are also research centres within departments in the areas of Systems Architecture and of Human Computer Interaction. The School thus embraces one of the largest groupings of academics in the UK working in the software engineering and computer science fields with expertise in all areas from computer architecture through to requirements engineering and human interface design.
The Researchers associated with the project who will work on this project belong to the Department of Computer Science and the Centre for HCI Design. The Department of Comnputer Science teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Computer Science and in Software Engineering, and is planning a new course in Distributed Computing. Within the department the main research areas are: formal methods in software engineering, requirements engineering, logic prgramming and concurrency, image processing, expert systems, parallel computer architecture and languages, distributed operating systems. The requirements engineering research group works in conjunction with the Centre for HCI Design, a University accredited centre of excellence with particular expertise in human computer interaction, requirements and design. The requirements engineering group involves staff, research associates and students with a common interest in requirements engineering issues. The group holds seminars, meetings and works together on joint research projects. The group maintains close cooperation with Imperial College and with Universitat Essen.
Research projects with a significant requirements engineering content held by members of the group include: FOREST, Formal Requirements Specification Techniques I & II, funded by the UK DTI; TARA, Tool Assisted Requirements Analysis, funded by the US Air Force; GMARC, Generic Modelling Approach to Requirements Capture funded by UK DTI; ESF - ATP, Eureka Software Factory - Advanced Technology Programme, funded by the UK DTI; VOILA, Viewpoints and Inconsistency Management, funded by the UK EPSRC; FOSE, Foundational Models for Software Engineering, funded by the UK EPSRC; MODELAGE, Formal Modelling of Intelligent Agents, funded by the CEU; ISCORE, Information Systems Correctness and Reliability I & II, funded by the CEU; NATURE, Novel Approaches and Theories for Requirements Engineeing, funded by the CEU; Conflict Prediction and Resolution Study, funded by the UK Civil Aviation Authority; Cooperative Knowledge-based Systems Browsing funded by the UK SERC; Requirements Engineering Education, funded by the UK EPSRC.
Members of the group have published extensively and have key roles within the requirements engineering and wider software engineering community. The group produces the widely circulated Requirements Engineering Newsletter. This group manages a "club" of industrial organisations who meet to discuss research issues of joint concern and to share expertise. The group maintains active research collaboration with Philips Research Laboratories in the area of requirements traceability. The group has an active programme of consultancy.
Researchers associated with the project:
Prof. A.G. Sutcliffe Mr. D. Till Dr. N.A. Maiden Dr. G. Spanoudakis
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Prof. Alistair Sutcliffe
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Alistair Sutcliffe holds an M.A. in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University (1974) and a PhD. from University College of Wales (1980). He is currently Professor of Systems Engineering, and Director of Centre for HCI Design in the School of Informatics, City University . He has extensive research experience in software engineering and human computer interaction and currently participates in Esprit projects NATURE (basic research in requirements), INTUITIVE (database interfaces), and UK funded projects Knowledge based Browser and DATUM (safety critical assessment). Professor Sutcliffe has also been project coordinator of Esprit p3160 IDEAL (basic research on explanation dialogues), principal investigator on the SERC funded MAJIC project on JSP program support environments; and a member of the Esprit Amadeus project on IS conceptual modelling. He is a member of IFIP working group 8.1 on Comparative Evaluation of Information Systems, founder and secretary of IFIP working group 13.2, Methodology for User Centred Design. He is Director of the Centre for HCI Design, a University accredited centre of excellence for HCI and Software Engineering research with 14 staff and research students. He has authored 3 books and over 100 journal and conference publications.
Name: Mr. David Till
Nationality: British
Academic Qualifications & Experience: David Till has a first degree in Mathematics from Oxford University and an MSc in Computer Science from London University. He worked as a teacher of mathematics for four years in the 60's but since then has been a lecturer in computer science, for seventeen years at London University and since 1989 at City University. He is now Reader in Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science.
During these more than twenty years of experience as a lecturer, he has taught course modules over a wide range of topics: theory of computation, compilers, formal description of programming languages, programming methodology, functional and logic programming, formal specification, concurrency, object-oriented analysis, design and programming. He has published two books (Prentice-Hall), one on functional programming, one on formal specification and refinement; also papers in these same areas. Current research interests are in formal specification and formal software development, and in requirements capture. He has recently participated in two research projects in the requirements engineering area: an IED-funded project entitled "A Generic Model Approach to Requirements Capture", together with King's College London, Computer System Architects and the Civil Aviation Authority; an Esprit project, "Novel Approcahes to Theory Underlying Requirements Engineering", together with Universities of Aachen, Paris I, FORTH(Greece) and SISU(Sweden).
He has acted as consultant to Collins Publishers, where he designed a suite of programs to analyse word usage in foreign language teaching materials, and to STC Ltd, first as a consultant to the PANGLOSS project (ESPRIT), just before secondment to STC Ltd in 1986, and as a lecturer on an in-house Z course.
He is currently External Examiner for the MSc in Computer Science at the University of Kent, and for the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in computing at University College London.
Name: Dr. G. Spanoudakis
Nationality: Hellenic
Academic Qualifications & Experience: George Spanoudakis holds a B.Sc in Computer Science and Statistics(Economical University of Athens, 1988), a MSc in Artificial Intelligence(Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, 1989) and a PhD in Computer Science(University of Crete, 1994). From 1989 to 1994, Dr. Spanoudakis was working at the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research and Tecnology-Hellas, where he participated in the Esprit projects ITHACA(on software reuse) and NATURE(requirements representation, domain analysis and reuse). Currently, he works at the Department of Computer Science of the City University, as a research fellow.
Selected Publications:
Finkelstein, A., Gabbay, D., Hunter, A., Kramer, J., & Nuseibeh, B.(1994): "Inconsistency Handling In Multi-Perspective Specifications" IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 20, 8, 569-578.
Finkelstein, A. "Requirements Engineering: a review and research agenda" in Proc 1st Asian & Pacific Software Engineering Conference, (IEEE CS Press) 1994, 10-19.
Gotel, O. & Finkelstein, A. "An Analysis of the Requirements Traceability Problem" in Proc. 1st International Conference on Requirements Engineering 1994, (IEEE CS Press) 1994, 94-101.
Nuseibeh, B., Kramer, J. & Finkelstein, A. "A Framework for Expressing the Relationships Between Multiple Views in Requirements Specification", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 20, 10 (1994), 760-773.
Maiden N.A.M and Sutcliffe A.G. (1992); Exploiting reusable specification through analogy. Communications of the ACM, Vol 35(4), pp 55-64.
Sutcliffe A.G. and Maiden N.A.M., (1993), Bridging the requirements gap: Policies, Goals and Domains, In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop of Software Specification and Design, pp 52-56, Eds Feather M.S and van Lamsweerde A., IEEE Press.
Sutcliffe A.G. and Maiden N.A.M., (1994), Domain modelling for reuse. In Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Software reusability, Eds Frakes W.B. pp 169-173, IEEE Computer Society Press.
Bolton, D., Jones, S. V., Till, D., Furber, D. & Green, S.(1994): Knowledge based Support for Requirements Engineering; International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2, 2, .
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: David Till
Address:Department of Computer Science City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB UNITED KINGDOM
Telephone number: + 44 71 477 8000 x 3925
Telefax number: + 44 71 477 8587
EMail: till@cs.city.ac.uk
List of Members