Previously I was the Senior Deputy Dean for the Faculty of Information Technology. I took up that role at the beginning of February 2018 when I moved from Deakin University. I was the 2IC to the Executive Dean, Faculty of IT. I worked with the Dean, Faculty Manager, Deputy Deans, Associate Deans and Group Leads to help lead and manage the Faculty, including people development and management, strategic planning, operations, finances, research and teaching leadership, engagement, …

Until February 2018 I was Pro Vice-Chancellor ICT Innovation and Translation at Deakin University and an Alfred Deakin Professor. I provided strategic leadership of ICT research across the university with an emphasis on building collaborative teams across groups and disciplines, building teams to tackle larger problems and working with diverse stakeholders and partners on various externally funded projects. 

Prior to that I was at the Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia and was the Dean of the School of Software and Electrical Engineering and the Director of the large Research Centre Swinburne University Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems (SUCCESS). I was previously the Head of Computer Science and Software Engineering  at Swinburne and briefly Deputy Dean for the previous Faculty of ICT. 

Before coming to Australia at the end of 2009 I was Head of Department for Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. 

From 2014-2017 I was also a Senior Principal Researcher with Data61. 

My teaching is mostly in the area of team projects, software requirements and design, software processes, distributed systems, and programming.  My research is mostly in the area of software tools and techniques, software architecture, model-driven software engineering, visual languages, software security engineering, service-based and component-based systems and user interfaces. My work is generally pretty applied and I do consulting work with a range of companies.  These have included, among many others, Thales Australia, CA Labs, XSol Ltd, Orion Health Ltd, Peace Software Ltd, and Whitecloud Systems Ltd.

I have been an academic for approximately 29 years and previously worked in the IT industry as a Programmer/Analyst and as a consultant. Positions have included:

• 2020 - 2025 - Australian Laureate Fellow and Professor of Software Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

• 2018 - 2020 - Senior Deputy Dean, Faculty of Information Technology and Professor of Software Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

• 2016 - 2018 - Pro Vice-Chancellor, ICT Innovation & Translation and Alfred Deakin Professor of Software Engineering, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

• 2014 - 2016 - Dean of the School of Software and Electrical Engineering, Director of the Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems and Professor of Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

• mid-2013 - end 2013 - Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies, Director of the Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems and Professor of Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

• 2010 - mid-2013 – Head of Computer Science & Software Engineering, Director of the Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems and Professor of Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

• 2008 & 2009 - Head of Department, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Software Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand

• 2006 & 2007 - Deputy Head of Department - Research, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Software Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand

• 2002-04 - Director (Head) of Software Engineering and Professor of Software Engineering, Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

• 1999-2001 - Senior Lecturer & Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

• 1993-99 - Lecturer & Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand

• 1988-90 - Programmer/Analyst, 5GL International Ltd

I was president of COmputing Research and Education (CORE) for 2013 and 2014. I was on the ARC College of Experts (2019-2021). I was the Chair of the ARC 2018 Engagement and Impact Assessment (EI 2018) Science and Technology panel.  I was on the ARC College of Experts (2015-17) and the New Zealand MBIE Smart Ideas and High Value Manufacturing and Services Panels (2014-2019). I was on the Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences (MIC) ARC ERA 2012 Research Evaluation Committee, and previously on the New Zealand FRST Expert Review and Post-doctoral Fellowships panels (2005-2009). 

I was very honoured to be awarded the 2014 IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering Distinguished Education award - see my own PhD supervisors comments on this here.   

I was very honoured to be awarded the 2023 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award and the 2023 CORE Distinguished Service Award. 

I was made a Lero Parnas Fellow in 2023.

I did all of my degrees - BSc(Hons), MSc and PhD in the Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.  

Additionally, I was awarded the Doctor of Science (DSc) from the University of Auckland in 2023.

I attended Papatoetoe High School in Auckland, New Zealand, where I was the Dux (top of year) of my year.

Teaching

I love teaching and believe it is one of the best things, if not the best thing, about being an academic. An excellent place to find a wide range of teaching, research development, and academic career development resources is Rick Reiss's "Tomorrow's Professor" mailing list and web site.  See http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/postings.php

I have taught a wide range of software engineering, computer science and information systems courses in my career. I have specialised in "project based learning", specifically project-based courses where students work in small-ish teams on a semester or term-long project.  More...

Research

My vision in research is to "make Software Engineering more like traditional Engineering disciplines" - by leveraging human-centric visual modelling approaches to model, reason about and generate complex software systems. To this end, my research has focused on software engineering, particularly software engineering tools and associated methods. I have also worked most recently in the areas of domain-specific visual languages (DSVLs) and model-driven engineering methods and tools. Previously I worked in the areas of aspect-oriented software development, software architecture, process-centred tools, user interfaces - especially model-driven, multi-device, sketch-based and web-based diagramming UIs, and visual languages. I have also written some papers about software engineering, computer science and Information Systems engineering education.

Current projects include the Visual Wiki platform for knowledge engineering, Marama meta-tools and Software Process and Product Improvement projects.  More...

Possible Research Projects with me

I am interested in supervising topics in (but not limited to):

• human-centric issues in software engineering - personality, emotions, gender, age, disability and any other human factor impacts on software usage, requirements engineering, design, testing, project management, ...

• domain-specific visual languages and modelling tools for... almost anything :-)

• almost anything to do with software tools i.e. if you can build an innovative tool for it, I am interested!! :-)

• smart homes, digital health and smart city solutions

• mining software repositories, especially testing-related data, and requirements and architecture-related data

• model-driven engineering of apps, e-health, smart city and cloud applications

• model-driven approaches to security engineering

• innovative approaches to software engineering and computer science education and training, especially project-based, team-based and industry-based (ideally all three!)

Please have a look at my Research and Publications pages to get a feel for the work I do.   See my Research Students page for current PhD projects with scholarships available.

Publications

A list of my publications can be found here.

You may also find some of my papers @  Google Scholar  or DBLP or MS Academic or Arnetminer or  ACM Digital Library or IEEE Digital Library ...

Talks

I have given a number of talks over the years, some very specific; some very general. I will collect up some of these in PDF format (maybe even audio/podcast when time permits :-) ) and add off this link.  More...