Dr Gary Allen

Having completed a first degree in Computing in Business I joined the University of Huddersfield as a research assistant in September 1990, working with Dr Adrian Jackson on a project entitled "An Educational Integrated Project Support Environment". At the same time I registered for my own PhD on the complimentary topic, "Software Development Methods for Educational Use".

At the end of the research project I was offered some part time teaching, while also working on short contracts for various organisations. This allowed me to complete the PhD, which was confirmed in 1994.

After a brief stint in industry I returned to the university as a full time lecturer in 1995. Since then I have worked in the School of Computing and Engineering as a senior lecturer in software engineering. I teach programming, systems modelling, and software engineering, and have a particular interest in distributed and client server systems development. I am currently the Year Tutor for the first year of the Computing/Software Development Suite, I lead the Software Engineering Research Group, and I am the School's Academic Conduct Officer.

Outside work I am a keen Huddersfield Town fan, I am interested in black and white photography, and I'm an avid reader.

My main teaching interests are:

• Software Engineering
• Software Design and Development
• Computer Science
• Distributed and Client Server Systems.

My research is in the area of Software Engineering, and I have a particular interest in Software Engineering Education, including the development of software tools and software development methods specifically designed for use in education. My PhD, entitled ‘Software Development Methods for Educational Use’, concentrated upon the provision of integrated Method and Tool support for the Teaching of Software Engineering. I am also interested in Object Oriented technologies . especially:

• OO Analysis and Design Methods and Design Patterns
• Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP)
• The Java Programming Language, and teaching programming using Java
• Distributed and Client-Server Systems - especially the adoption of tuple-space based systems (such as JavaSpaces) to provide novel solutions to the problems of scalability and concurrency in distributed applications
• Integrated Project Support Environments (IPSE), Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE), Intelligent CASE, Meta-CASE.

Current project ideas are listed below, but I would also be interested in receiving applications from potential researchers with ideas in my areas of interest.

• Aspect Patterns in Object Oriented Software Design [PhD]
• Early Aspect Identification [MSc by Research]
• Software Metrics for Aspect Oriented Systems [PhD]