GREGORY BUTLER

Title:   Professor

Postal Address:
         Department of Computer Science
         Concordia University
         1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd West
         Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8
     
Office:  EV 003.219, 1515 Ste Catherine West
Email:   gregb@cs.concordia.ca
Phone:   (514) 848-2424 extension 3031
Phone:   (514) 848-2424 extension 3000 (secretary)
Fax:     (514) 848-2830 

A Short Bio

Greg Butler is Professor in Computer Science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He joined Concordia in 1992 after nine years on the faculty of the University of Sydney, Australia. Dr Butler has broad international experience, including periods visiting the University of Delaware, Universität Bayreuth, Universität Karlsruhe, and RMIT, Melbourne. Dr Butler has consulted on object-oriented design, object technology, and extensible software architectures.

Dr Butler's research goal is to construct knowledge-based scientific work environments, especially those for genomics and bioinformatics. In order to succeed at this, Dr Butler has been investigating software technology for complex software systems - including software architectures, object-oriented design, and software reuse - to complement his experience in scientific computation and knowledge-based systems.

Working closely with colleagues and students, Dr Butler is developing the Know-It-All framework for database systems. In bioinformatics, they plan to apply this framework to construct knowledge-bases of the metabolic pathways and signal networks of model organisms. Dr Butler is a member of the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics that obtained significant support from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and a donation for equipment from BioChem Pharma. The research is supported by an NSERC Genomics grant, and a large project grant from Genome Canada and Genome Quebec for work on fungal genomics.

Dr Butler obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney in 1980 for work on computational group theory. He worked in computer algebra for 20 years developing algorithms, constructing software systems, designing languages, and investigating the integration of databases and knowledge-bases with computer algebra systems. He is a major contributor to the Cayley system for computational group theory, modern algebra, and discrete mathematics.

Dr Butler has over 50 technical publications in journals and conferences. His software has led to hundreds of research publications by users of Cayley and Magma. Dr Butler has supervised 3 PhD students and 28 Masters students to completion, and currently supervises 9 PhD and 31 Masters students.

A short Curriculum Vitae (June 2001) and a complete Curriculum Vitae (June 2001).

Research

• BioIT: Laboratory for Bioinformatics Technology
  • Aspergillus niger Gene Expression
  • The BioIT Projects for Bioinformatics Infrastructure
    • Know-It-All framework for data management
    • Do-It-All framework for workflow and computational tasks
    • Solve-It-All framework for intelligent computing
  • Bioinformatics Algorithms
• Complex Software Systems
  • Object-oriented framework development and evolution
  • Know-It-All framework for database management systems
  • Truckin' project: applying evolutionary programming to generate reliable, robust software

Selected Research Papers
See also DBLP: Gregory Butler which now unifies my research personas in the areas of databases, software, and computer algebra. I used to have two DBLP entries under Greg Butler and Gregory Butler.

Talks, Tutorials and Presentations

Graduate Students

Information for Prospective Graduate Students

Teaching

• COMP354 Software Engineering, Winter 2012.
• COMP5541 Tools and Techniques for Software Engineering, Winter 2012.
• COMP6471 Software Design Methodologies, Fall 2011.
• COMP 6811 Bioinformatics Algorithms, Fall 2011. Cancelled.
• SOEN 6011 Software Engineering Processes, Fall 2009.
• COMP354 Software Engineering I, Summer 2009.
• SOEN 341 Software Process, Fall 2008.
• COMP6821 Bioinformatics Databases and Systems, Winter 2008.
• SOEN 6011 Software Engineering Processes, Fall 2007.
• SOEN 341 Software Process, Fall 2007.
• SOEN 341 Software Process, Winter 2007.
• SOEN 343 Software Design, Fall 2006.
• COMP6471 Software Design Methodologies, Winter 2006.
• COMP 791R Knowledge-Based Bioinformatics, Fall 2005.
• SOEN 343 Software Design, Fall 2005.
• COMP6471 Software Design Methodologies, Winter 2005.
• COMP691 R Bioinformatics Algorithms, Winter 2005.
• COMP6471 Software Design Methodologies, Winter 2004.
• COMP691 R Bioinformatics Algorithms, Winter 2004.
• COMP354 Software Engineering I, Fall 2004.
• COMP691 R Bioinformatics Algorithms, Summer 2003.
• COMP691S Bioinformatics Databases and Systems, Summer 2003.
• COMP791Z Bioinformatics Software Development, possibly in 2005.
• SOEN337 Metrics and Measurement in Software Development

And many introductory courses on programming, programing methodology, data structures and algorithms, compilers, and databases. Also advanced courses on programming language design, and semantics.

Workshops

I have been the co-organizer of several workshops in bioinformatics and generative programming.

• Fungal Genome Bioinformatics Session, 2nd International Fungal Proteomics Symposium, Society for Industrial Microbiology (SIM) Annual Meeting, Baltimore, 2006.
• Knowledge-Based Bioinformatics Workshop, Montreal, September 2005.
• Bioinformatics and Multi-Agent Systems Workshop (BIXMAS 2002)
• NETTAB Agents in Bioinformatics Workshop 2002
• ECOOP'2002 Workshop on Generative Programming
• OOPSLA'2001 Workshop on Generative Programming
• ECOOP'2001 Workshop on Generative Programming
• ICSE'2001 Workshop on Generative Techniques for Product Lines
• SPLC'2000 Workshop on Generative Techniques for Product Lines
• EML Workshop on Management and Integration of Biochemical Data, September 2000.

Conferences

• Program Co-Chair, Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering, Erfurt, Germany, October 9-12, 2000.
• Program Committee Member
  • International Conference on Bioinformatics Research and Development (BIRD), Berlin, March 2007.
  • Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium, Quebec, June 2006.
  • Generative Programming and Component Engineering, 2002.
  • Asia-Pacific Conference on Software Quality, 2001.
  • Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering, 2001.
  • International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, 2001.
  • Langages et Modèles à Objets, 2000.
  • Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation, 1998, 2000, 2002.
  • Design and Implementation of Symbolic Computation Systems, 1996.
  • International Symposium for Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, 1994.
  • Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Mathematical Computation, 1993, 1995, 1996.
• Registration Chair and Local Organizer, International Symposium for Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, 1995.

Links

• Learning C++
• Learning UML and Object-Oriented Design
• Learning XML
• Learning Java
• Python and Perl
• Introduction to Bioinformatics
• Bioinformatics Technology Resources
  • PostgresSQL, mySQL, AceDB
  • biojava, biopython, bioperl
• Bioinformatics Centers
• Bioinformatics Information Resources