Communications and Software Engineering
Because the world has grown so reliant on telecommunications, Dr Wayne Grover has devoted much of his career to preventing a major breakdown. He invented technology that allows communications networks to heal themselves instantly and went on to sign a $5.5 million sponsorship and licensing agreement with MCI, the second largest telecommunications company in the world. In recognition of his groundbreaking research, Grover won the W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The international award is given for the year's most outstanding research paper published in any of the organization's journals.
The modern telecommunications industry depends on a flourishing software environment. Software engineering finds some of its major challenges in the realm of telecommunications systems. Therefore, the research disciplines of communications and software engineering go hand in hand. The synergy between the two has fostered the development of a great number of exciting new communication technologies.
The Communications and Software Engineering Group has many researchers of international stature. For example, both of the NSERC Steacie Fellows (Wayne Grover, 2000 and Norman Beaulieu, 1999) currently active in electrical engineering are in this group. In 1999, Wayne Grover won the W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for the most outstanding paper reporting original research work.
This was the first time the prize had been awarded to a Canadian as the principal researcher and for research done solely in Canada.
Activities in communications and software engineering are focused in two areas:
The Laboratory for Quantitative Software Engineering is a world-class centre for innovative and applied research in three areas: process and quality, e-collaboration and e-commerce, and software reuse. The lab is renowned for its pioneering and innovative approach of using quantitative and empirical studies in software methodology development.
Members are part of Alberta Software Engineering Research Consortium (ASERC) and have established vital and highly productive research collaborative links with many international institutions, including Trent Nottingham University in the UK, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
TRLabs was founded in 1986 by members of the Communications Group. It was one of the earliest successful Canadian not-for-profit industry-university-government consortia for pre-competitive collaborative research in telecommunications technology, theory, and applications.
From its origins in Edmonton with three staff and two industry sponsors, TRLabs, by 2001, had grown to encompass five laboratories with nearly 200 staff, 50 industry sponsors, and a total annual budget of $11 million.