Welcome to the Home Page of Bob Waters

About Bob Waters

I am a full time lecturer here at Georgia Tech.

I finally finished my PhD here, and chose to stay around our students. My dissertation was on the recovery of software architectures from legacy systems using concept analysis.

I have a BS in Computer Science (minors in Math/Physics) from Murray State University (75) and an MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech (97). I spent 20 years in the Military retiring in 1995 as a Lieutenant Colonel. My basic branch was Aviation and my alternate specialty was Systems Automation. I was selected to attend the Naval Test Pilot School (one of only 8 army pilots each year selected to attend) and was in Class 93. I received the Empire Award for the outstanding thesis for the class. After graduation, I was assigned to the Army Aviation Technical Test Center where I served 4 years as an experimental test pilot and was also a flight test division chief, and chief of the Technical Test Support and Logistics division where I supervised the Instrumentation and Computer Support Branches among others.

My last assignment was as to Forces Command Headquarters in Atlanta. I was project manager for the automation modernization effort. In one year we prototyped and fielded a 1500 user local area network. I was also in charge of the "lab" where we prototyped new hardware configurations and to ensure software compatibility and integration prior to fielding on the main network. Finally, I served as the chairman of the configuration control board (CCB). I was affectionately (or sarcastically depending on whether you liked the network or not) as the "Father of FAME." [FAME was the acronym for the system]

My hobbies include playing the guitar (my Carvin AE-185, Parker Fly Deluxe, McPherson 5.0 XP Cedar/Rosewood and Martin 00016C-GTE) and sailing (my McGregor 26). I am also learning to play the banjo (a Deering Sierra) and Dobro (a Beard Goldtone). I no longer fly because I haven't got the money to support such an expensive hobby, as sailing has many of the same thrills as flying anyway.

Research Interests

My research interests include Software Engineering Education and Software Architectural Recovery. Specifically in education I worked with Mike McCracken on implementing active learning strategies into MIS courses using Problem-Based Learning as a vehicle. My dissertation research was on Architectural Synthesis -- that is merging information from different sources to build an accurate representation of the architecture of a legacy system. My specific contribution involves using a combination of text data mining and concept analysis to match architectural information across the concept-assignment boundary.

I was a research assistant for the MORALE project.
I am currently a full-time lecturer for the college of computing.
I have taught the following classes: CS1322, CS2335, CS2340, CS3511, CS3911/4911, CS4320

Publications

MILITARY (available from Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)):

Co-author: Flying Qualities, Performance, and Mission Equipment Evaluation of the XXX Helicopter. NOTE: This report and identification of actual aircraft is classified SECRET/NOFORN/WINTEL/NO CONTRACT/ORCON.
Principal Author: Flying Qualities, Performance, and Mission Equipment Evaluation of the XXX Helicopter. NOTE: This report and identification of actual aircraft is classified CONFIDENTAL/NOFORN.
Co-author: Evaluation of Performance Degradation of Taped Composite Main Rotor Blades on the UH-1H Helicopter.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING EDUCATION

McCracken, Michael and Waters, Robert, Problem-Based Learning in MIS Courses, 5th Annual Conference on Problem-Based Learning, Universty of Delaware, 1996.
Waters, Robert and McCracken, Michael, Assessment and Evaluation in Problem-Based Learning, Frontiers in Education Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, Nov 1997. (avaiable electronically from: http://fairway.ecn.purdue.edu/~fie/fie97/papers/1454.pdf).
McCracken, Michael and Waters, Robert, Observing Problem-Based Students in the Wild, Innovations in Technical Education Conference, Poland, 1998.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

Waters, Robert, Rugaber, Spencer and Abowd, Gregory, Using the Architectural Synthesis Process to Analyze the ISVis System--A Case Study, Technical Report GIT-CC-98-22, 1998.
Waters, Robert and Abowd, Gregory, Architectural Synthesis: Merging Multiple Architectural Perspectives, 5th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE), Atlanta Georgia, 1999.
Waters, Robert, Rugaber, Spencer and Abowd, Gregory, Architectural Element Matching Using Concept Analysis, International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Cocoa Beach, FL, 1999.

Projects

Ported the Cthreads, Dataexchange and PBIO libraries to Windows NT
Ethnographic study of MIS students participating in Problem-Based Learning
ACME Server, a communications front-end to the CMU ACME library.
VisEd - a graphical architectural editor that allows graphical display and manipulation of an ACME architectural description.
REMORA - an architectural synthesis toolkit
Dowser - Port to Windows

Other areas of interest

Contact Information:

watersr@cc.gatech.edu

College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280