Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Joined School 1967
BASc (Toronto),
MSc (Waterloo),
PhD (Waterloo)
| dcowan@uwaterloo.ca | |
| Web | http://csg.uwaterloo.ca/~dcowan/ |
| Voice | 519-888-4690 or x84690 |
| Fax | 519-746-5422 |
|
| Donald Cowan
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Joined School 1967 BASc (Toronto),
|
Professor Cowan's research interests span a number of areas in software engineering including formalized approaches to software design and software evolution, and testing these approaches by creating operational software systems. Dr. Cowan’s current interest in software engineering focuses on design and implementation of Web-based systems, particularly in reducing the number of abstractions required to produce and validate such software.
During the last few years, the World-Wide Web and associated technologies have become the platforms of choice for creating many new software applications. These can encompass extensive multimedia materials including imaginative uses of maps, Web sites, databases and electronic and mobile commerce functions. However, these applications do not operate in isolation but must often be connected to existing or legacy systems. Further they must be carefully designed for future evolution and subsequent maintenance.
Professor Cowan has recently been focusing on component-based systems in this context and testing his design methods by building Web-based applications. He has been developing frameworks for components and using declarative approaches based on XML and XSL to create applications. The work has resulted in the Web Informatics Development Environment (WIDE) an extensive framework-based toolkit that supports very rapid development of applications, often within a few hours.
Dr. Cowan is a designer or co-designer of the underlying technology for over 60 web-based information systems. Examples can be found at http://comap.ca, www.newcomerswaterloo.ca, www.artsportalwr.ca and www.volunteerkw.ca. The same technology has been used to build enterprise management systems for business, government and the health system. Dr. Cowan is also the designer of StudySpace a computer-based learning tool that has been used in many online courses and is currently being used worldwide by the United Nations University in courses on water quality management.
ACM Distinguished Scientist (2010); Waterloo Award (2009); Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision, University of Waterloo (2006); Brazilian National Order of Scientific Merit - Grand Cross Class (2005); Distinguished Professor Emeritius, University of Waterloo (1999); Information Management Excellence in the Public Sector - Silver Medal (1999); Compaq Award for Scientific Production (1995)
Donald Cowan is the author or co-author of over 240 refereed papers and 15 books in computer science, computer/communications, software engineering, education, environmental information systems and mathematics. He has served as a consulting scholar with IBM Corporation on the application of computers in education. He has also served as a consultant to many businesses, government agencies and universities including Apple, Xerox, Fasken and Calvin, Sasktel, Gulf Oil, the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations and various ministries of both the Ontario, Canadian and foreign governments.
Donald Cowan is a co-founder of several University of Waterloo spin-off companies; the most noteworthy ones being WATCOM, now iAnywhere Solutions and part of Sybase, and of LivePage Corporation, now part of Oracle Corporation.
Mendonca, Marcilio, Cowan, Donald, Decision-making coordination and efficient reasoning techniques for feature-based configuration. Science of Computer Programming, 75 (2010) 311-332.
Dai, W., Covvey, D., Alencar, P., Cowan, D., Lightweight Query-Based Analysis of Workflow Process Dependencies, Journal of Systems and Software,82 (2009) 915-931.
Paes Rodrigo, Lucena Carlos, Carvalho Gustavo, Cowan Donald D, An Event-Driven High Level Model for the Specification of Laws in Open Multi-Agent Systems, Journal of Systems and Software, 82 (2009) 629–642.
F.G. Zaupa, I.M.S. Gimenes, D.D. Cowan, P.S.C. Alencar, and C.J.P. Lucena. A Service-oriented Process to develop Web Applications. Journal of Universal Computer Science (Online), pp. 1-20, 2008.
J. Dong, P.S.C. Alencar, D.D. Cowan, and S. Yang. Composing Pattern-Based Components and Verifying Correctness. To appear in Journal of Systems and Software.
D.D. Cowan, D. Covvey, S. Fenton, J. Miller, D. Mulholland, M. de Groot, C. Matyas, and F. McGarry. Sustainability Models for Web-Based Information Systems Supporting Communities of Practice. To appear in International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, 2007.
M. Mendonca, D.D. Cowan, W. Malyk, and T. Oliveira. Collaborative Product Configuration: Formalization and Efficient Algorithms for Dependency Analysis. Journal of Software, Academy Publisher, ISSN:1796-217X, Issue 6, 2007.
T.C. Oliveira, P.S.C. Alencar, C.J.P. Lucena, and D.D. Cowan. RDL: A Language for Framework Instantiation Representation. Journal of Systems and Software, 80(11):1902-1929, 2007.
P.S.C. Alencar, T. Oliveira, D.D. Cowan, and D. Mulholland. Towards Monitored Data Consistency and Business Processing Based on Declarative Software Agents, Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems - Research Issues and Practical Applications, Garcia, A., Lucena, C. et al. (Eds), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 2603, pp. 267-284, Springer, 2003.
P.S.C. Alencar, D.D. Cowan, and C.J.P. Lucena. A Logical Theory of Interfaces and Objects. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 28:548-575, 2002.
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519-888-4567 x33293
Fax: 519-885-1208
Contact | Feedback: cs-webmaster@cs.uwaterloo.ca | David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science | Faculty of Mathematics
Last modified: Friday, 14-Jan-2011 10:20:27 EST
