Frans Alexander Henskens

Brief description

I commenced as an academic at the age of 40. After establishing, with Professor John Rosenberg, the very successful and productive Persistent Systems Research Group at the University of Sydney, I left the group in 1995 to return to Newcastle for family reasons. I was then employed by the School of Management, UoN, on a series of short teaching contracts, until being appointed to a full-time position with FEBE in mid 1998. I established inter-disciplinary collaboration with groups in UoN (Mental Health) and QUT (Bioinformatics), achieving substantial results including an international patent. From 2002 I also became heavily involved in University administration as HoD and Assistant Dean, but also resumed work on my previous area of expertise, forming the Distributed Systems Research Group (DCRG) which I lead. This work recommenced in parallel with continued collaboration with my colleagues in Mental Health Studies, in recent years has increasingly focused on Health Behaviour, and in creating infrastructure by which our research is able to flourish. Of note is my development with Dr. David Paul and Dr. Mark Wallis of the highly configurable and powerful QuON software system for collection and dissemination of data/information, largely using mobile computing devices. QuON is underpinning an increasingly large number of Medical research projects and interventions at UoN and other institutions. Additionally, I am advancing the techniques and ideas on which I commenced work in the early 1990s (and on which I supervised Ph.D students who graduated in 1995 (X2), 1996, 1997, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 (x2) & 2017 respectively), applying them to grid and Internet-based distribution.My more recently completed PhD student projects include: "Advances in Cluster Editing: Linear FPT Kernels and Comparative Implementations" - graduated PhD in 2010; "Data Management and Query Processing for Semistructured and Structured Databases" - graduated PhD in 2011; "A Framework to Support Long-Running Web Service Transactions" - graduated PhD in 2012; "Pedagogical-based Learning Object System to Support Self-regulated Learning of Computer Science" - graduated PhD in 2013; "A Software Engineering Process for BDI Multiagent Systems" - graduated PhD in 2014; "Component-based Runtime Environment for Internet Applications" - graduated PhD in 2015; "Reinforcement Learning in Hierarchical Multi-Agent Systems" - graduated PhD in 2015; & "A Framework for Clinical Reasoning, Knowledge Acquisition, Retrieval and Synthesis in Psychiatry" - graduated PhD in 2017.Research ExpertiseResearch centres on engineering of flexible software systems, bioinformatics, operating systems and computer forensics, distributed and grid computing, resilience and availability in database systems, use of persistent stores for bulk data storage and manipulation, and use of (particularly mobile) computing to investigate and influence health behaviour. In 2015 my research supervision was recognised by my receipt of the Vice Chancellors Award for Research Supervision Excellence.Teaching ExpertiseIn 2007 my teaching was recognised when I received both the University of Newcastle Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence and the Australian College of Educators N.S.W. Quality Teaching Award. Administrative ExpertiseHead, Discipline of Computer Science & Software Engineering; Deputy Head, School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science; Assistant Dean (IT), Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment; Founder & Head, Distributed Computing Research Group. CollaborationsResearch interests centre on: engineering of flexible (component-based) software systems; the role of distributed systems and mobile c