Objective:

Experimental research and development in the areas of operating systems, real-time systems, QoS management and distributed computing. Related interests include adaptive resource management, system extensibility, stability and safety.

Education:

• Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
Ph.D., Computer Science, August 2000.
Thesis: "Adaptive Real-Time Management of Communication and Computation Resources".
Advisor: Professor Karsten Schwan.
 
• Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia.
M.S., Computer Science, September 1998.
 
• University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne , Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
M.Eng., Microelectronics and Software Engineering, First-Class Honors, June 1991.
Masters project: "Collision Avoidance for a Mobile Robot Using Ultrasound".

• Associate Professor, Boston University, Boston, MA (September 2006-present). Formerly Assistant Professor (September 2000-August 2006). Research interests include operating systems, real-time systems, QoS management and distributed computing. Also have focused on language and runtime support for service extensions in Linux, as well as thread and packet scheduling. Courses taught include "Introduction to Operating Systems (CS552)", "Experimental Operating Systems (CS591)", "Advanced Software Systems (CS410)", and "Computer Systems (CS210)".
• Scholar-in-Residence, VMware, Inc., Cambridge, MA (June 2007-June 2008). Continuing contractor position as an Advanced Research Engineer.
  
• Lab Operations Co-Officer, Boston University, Boston, MA (September 2005-present). Responsible for departmental annual equipment budget and overseeing of system administration staff.
  
• Research Assistant, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (September 1994-August 2000). Research on adaptive resource management for real-time, high performance computing and distributed systems. Also worked on scalable, run-time system support for coherent, replicated shared objects.
• Instructor, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (Spring 1999). Taught undergraduate course in operating systems and data management (CS3431).
• Software Engineer, Beta Instruments Co. Ltd., England (1992-1993).  Developed embedded system software/hardware for laser measurement gauges used in the wire industry. Experience with Intel 80196 microcontrollers, Texas Instruments 9900 assembler, embedded C programming, and firmware.
• IEE-Approved Engineer in all divisions of Davis Derby Engineering Ltd, England (1986-1991). Research and development of hardware/software for command, control and communication systems for hazardous atmospheres, especially for mining, oil-rigs and sea vessels. Experience with Intel 8051 microcontrollers, RS232, ROM BIOS programming and interrupt-driven systems.

• Extensively revised the introductory operating systems and advanced software systems courses at Boston University. See  http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/richwest/courses.html for more details.
• Developed a `sandbox' computing laboratory for undergraduate and graduate systems/networking project work at Boston University. The sandbox allows students to safely develop kernel code and gain practical experience with network routers.
• Developed a thread and packet scheduling algorithm, called DWCS, used in courses at Georgia Tech and Boston University. See http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/richwest/dwcs.html for more details.
• Developed a distributed shared object system, supporting configurable consistency protocols. Wrote a video game application using this system, that was used in several undergraduate courses taught at Georgia Tech. See http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/richwest/brobots.html for more details.

• Program Committee member for the 29th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, November 30-December 3, 2008, Barcelona, Spain.
• Program Committee member for the Workshop on Managed Many-Core Systems (co-located with HPDC 2008), June 2008, Boston, USA.
• Program Committee member for the 20th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), July 2008, Prague, Czech Republic.
• Program Committee member for the 14th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (Real-Time and Embedded Applications/Benchmarks Area), 2008, St. Louis, MO, USA.
  
• Program Committee member for the 13th IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications, August 21-24, 2007, Daegu, Korea.
• Program Committee member for the 19th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), Pisa, Italy, July 4-6, 2007
• Program Area Chair for the 13th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (Real-Time and Embedded Applications/Benchmarks Area), 2007, Bellevue, Washington.
  
• Program Committee member for the 27th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2006 (Special Track on Real-Time Middleware and Software Engineering), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Program Committee Co-Chair for the 12th IEEE Intl. Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing and Applications (RTCSA) 2006, Sydney, Australia.
• Program Committee member for the 12th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2006, San Jose, California.
• Program Committee member for the 26th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2005, Miami, Florida.
• Publicity Co-Chair for the 11th IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA), August, 2005.
  
• Program Committee member for the 17th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems, July 6-8, 2005.
  
• Reviewer for the Distributed Object and Component-based Software Systems track of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 3-6, 2005.
  
• Program Committee member for the 13th International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Real-Time Systems 2005.
  
• Program Committee member for the Sixth Real-Time Linux Workshop, Nanyang Executive Centre, Singapore, November 3-5, 2004.
  
• Program Committee member for the Workshop on Quality of Service for Application Servers, October 17, 2004.
• In conjunction with the 23rd Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, Florianopolis, Brazil, 2004.
  
• Program Committee member for the 25th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2004, Lisbon, Portugal.
• Program Committee member for the 1st International Workshop on Data Distribution in Real-Time Systems (DDRTS), 2003.
• In conjunction with the 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems , 2003.
  
• Organizer and Program Committee member for The Fourth Real-Time Linux Workshop, Boston University, December 6-7, 2002.
• Program Committee member for the 8th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2002, San Jose, California.
• Program Committee member for IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2002.
• Publicity Co-Chair for the 22nd IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2001, London, England.
  
• Program Committee member for IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium, 2001.
• Reviewer for various journals including: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, the British Computer Society Computer Journal, the Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier), Computer Networks (Elsevier), Real-Time Systems Journal, IEEE Multimedia and ACM Transactions on Embedded Computer Systems.
  
• Reviewer for various conferences including IEEE RTSS, RTAS, ICDCS and IPDPS.
• Reviewer and panelist for various NSF proposals including: Embedded and Hybrid Systems (2004), ACR Software Systems (2003), ITR Small Software Systems (2002) and Embedded and Hybrid Systems (2002).

• Systems: 14+ years experience with Solaris (since 1994) and 13+ years experience with Linux (since 1995). Have written software for Linux, Solaris, Irix, SunOS, Ultrix, (Sequent) Dynix, MSDOS, Windows 3.x/95/98/NT. Also designed and co-wrote the Quest operating system, along with fellow research engineer, Gary Wong.
  
• Linux Kernel Programming: 10+ years experience of Linux kernel programming (since 1998), including the development of my CPU schedulers, DWCS and VDS (see Dynamic Window-Constrained Scheduling). Currently involved in the development of service extensions for Linux to adaptively manage resources, to improve QoS for multimedia and real-time applications. This work involves language and runtime support to guarantee system stability and integrity.
• Miscellaneous Software Skills: C/C++ (19+ years C language experience, since 1989), Pascal, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Xlib, OpenGL, (Bourne,C) Shell Programming, (8051,80x86,68000,9900,80196) assembly, Pthreads, Solaris Threads, TCP/IP, Ethernet, ATM, and BSD Socket Programming. Also have experience in Ada, ML, Lisp, Prolog and Java.
• X-Windows Programming: Have used Xlib and Tcl/Tk to develop X-Windows applications including my Battle Robots video game.
• Hardware: Analog and digital circuit experience: microcontrollers (8051, 80196), ROM programming, amplifier and filter design. Built an ultrasonic sensor-based system for navigation of a mobile robot as part of my MEng degree. Involved the design of a 40Khz positive feedback bandpass filter, amplification and level-detection circuitry for ultrasonic transducers, H-bridge rectifiers and RS232 communications to an X86-based PC.
  

• NSF Award #0720464 ($65000) -- CSR/EHS: The Design and Self-Organization of Component-based Systems for Dependable and Predictable Embedded Computing Environments, PI. Effective 09/01/2007.
  
• NSF Award #0615153 ($150000) -- CSR/EHS:  Quest: A System for Application-Specific Real-Time Services, PI. Effective 07/01/06.
  
• NSF Award #0205294 ($1665497)-- ITR: Internet Flows as First-Class Values: Support for Dynamic, Flexible Internet Services, Co-PI with Azer Bestavros, Assaf Kfoury, John Byers and Ibrahim Matta. Effective 10/01/02 for 60 months.
• NSF Research Infrastructure Award #0202067 ($1247395) -- SENSORIUM: Research Infrastructure for Managing Spatio-Temporal Objects in Video Sensor Networks, Co-PI with Azer Bestavros, Margrit Betke, John Byers, Stan Sclaroff, Mark Crovella, George Kollios, Ibrahim Matta, Gene Itkis, Assaf Kfoury, Leo Reyzin and Hongwei Xi. Effective 08/01/02 for 60 months.
  

• IEE-Approved Industry Studentship (1987-1991). Full academic funding for four years, plus two-year industrial placement in all divisions of an OEM.
• SERC/EPSRC British Studentship for Overseas Study (1994-1997). Awarded to prospective PhD students with outstanding academic achievements in engineering and science at the Bachelors and Masters level.

Papers:
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