Transition Plans

People have noticed that the affiliations on my web site have changed yet again. I therefore wanted to let everyone know what's going on. After spending 2.5 very productive years as a program manager at DARPA in the Information Exploitation Office (IXO) leading the national effort on distributed object computing middleware research I have return to being a university professor. As of January 2003, I am a Full Professor and Associate Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. I also work closely with the researchers at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems) (ISIS).

Dr. Ray Klefstad has become the head of the DOC group at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UC Irvine (UCI). Likewise, Dr. Ron Cytron and Dr. Chris Gill are leading the Distributed Object Computing (DOC) Center in the Computer Science Department at Washington University (WU), which will continue to conduct its leading-edge research on high-performance and real-time middleware and applications. Together, Vanderbilt University, UCI, and Washington University, St. Louis will continue working on the various research aspects related to ACE, TAO, CIAO, and ZEN. In essence, Vanderbilt University has become the "southern office" of the DOC group (ya'll ;-)), UCI is the "west coast office," and Washington University is the "midwest office". Naturally, ACE+TAO+CIAO will remain freely available, open-source software. In addition, a number of commercial companies will continue growing their support businesses to transition this middleware smoothly from open-source research projects to commercial-grade software.

In the Vanderbilt University DOC group, we are working on a variety of R&D topics, focusing primarily on Model Driven Development (MDD) tools in the CoSMIC project, which combines Model-Integrated Computing with QoS-enabled Component Middleware to support distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) applications. The Vanderbilt University DOC group works closely with UCI and Washington University on a variety of research topics associated with middleware, networking, and real-time embedded systems. Some projects we're working together are

All the DOC groups are working on various exciting research projects that are exploring various aspects of adaptive, real-time embedded systems using ACE, TAO, CIAO, ZEN, and CoSMIC. The research conducted at these institutions is synergistic, e.g., we're maintaining a synchronized CVS source tree for ACE+TAO+CIAO and a single architectural vision. This R&D process has resulted in geographically distributed, yet comprehensive and unified, middleware research program that provides excellent artifacts for the technology transition activities conducted by companies that provide commercial support for our open-source software.

In short, my move has not adversely affected any of the many ACE+TAO+CIAO activities. Although the ACE+TAO+CIAO project has been a group effort for many years, it represents my life's work (actually, several lives, judging from the fact that I don't seem to get much sleep ;-)). I'm still as active as ever in the ACE+TAO+CIAO projects and on the mailing lists, Vanderbilt University, UCI, and Washington University will continue working on ACE, TAO, CIAO, CoSMIC and ZEN R&D activities, and OCI and Riverace will solidify their commercial support for ACE+TAO, etc.

In today's virtual world, I've found that where you live is not as important as the community of people you work with. The ACE+TAO+CIAO project has been highly decentralized for many years, with key contributors and development teams literally all around the world. We remain connected by our common interest in improving open-source middleware and MDD tools. In the long-term, I believe this move will help to greatly improve the growth of ACE+TAO+CIAO - and now CoSMIC - by extending the presence of the DOC Center to the southern part of the USA.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks,

Doug

Back to Douglas C. Schmidt's home page.

Last modified 18:06:19 CST 25 January 2019