Dr Russel Winder

I am a self-employed consultant, analyst, trainer and author. I undertake expert witness work in all aspects of computer software. I am a regular consultant and trainer in: programming and programming languages (Python, Groovy, Go, D, Scala, Java, Ruby, C++, and C; build systems (SCons, Gradle, Ant, and Maven); and version control systems (Bazaar, Mercurial, Git, and Subversion). I also have a long standing interest and have done a lot of contract work using LaTeX to generate press PDF volumes.

I created and maintain the Gant system, which is a lightweight scripting framework for scripting Ant tasks. Gant is an integral component in the Grails Web application development framework, and (via a fork) the Groovy front end to Ant. I am a committing developer on the Groovy and Gradle projects and a regular contributor to SCons development efforts.

I am a committing developer of the GPars system which is a Groovy-based coordination language for parallel and concurrent systems on the Java Platform. I am also a committing developer on the Python-CSP system, a coordination language for Python/C++/C based on Concurrent Sequential Processes (CSP).

I present regularly at conference (e.g. ACCU, UKUUG, PyCon UK, EuroPython) on all aspects of software development (programming, build systems, version control systems) and topics relating to parallelism and programming in this world of all-pervasive parallel computer hardware.

I am currently writing a book on the GPars framework as a way of introducing actor model, dataflow model, agent model, communicating sequential processes (CSP), data parallelism, and software transactional memory (STM) to people working in Java and Groovy. The agenda is to show them that shared memory-multi threading is an infrastructure enabling technique and not something that should be used for applications programming.

Founder partner of this consultancy specializing is all aspects of parallelism and the effect on the world of computing of multicore processors. The partnership undertakes contract research and report writing as well as consultancy to organizations wishing to plan for the new parallel world or "parallelize" existing codes.

Founder director of the company which specializes in introducing and managing Linux-based systems and software and Web-based systems for small businesses. Also undertakes contract software development and build system work.

Director responsible for bringing the ORIGIN technology and the ORIGIN-J product to market. Responsible for a team of 10 developers and jointly responsible for the company.

Responsible for revolutionizing the teaching programme which had become out-of-date; in particular brought Java in as the primary teaching language. Started a research program in Medical Informatics in association with Department of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital. Continued research into parallel C++. For the period April 1998 onwards I was Head of Department.

I joined as a Lecturer in September 1983 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer then Reader in Software Engineering. I taught programming (C++ and Java) and Software Engineering. I managed the PhD programme for many years. My research focused on programming, and parallel object-oriented programming in particular. Human issues were of particular interest. I applied for and obtained a number of funded research projects with both SRC (now EPSRC) and ESPRIT (now EU Framework Programme).

I was responsible, jointly with the Systems Manager, for the provision of computing services for the department and for programming support to the staff and final year students. Supporting the staff turned into effectively being a research assistant on two research projects.