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Gabriel A. Wainer - Extended Biography
After obtaining my Ph.D. degree in 1998, and with over six years of experience as an Instructor and Assistant Professor in Argentina, Gabriel A. Wainer joined Carleton University in July of 2000 as Assistant Professor. He got Tenured in July 2004, and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in July 2005 and Full Professor in July 2012.
Research
His research at Carleton focuses on techniques for transforming simulation models into real-time systems. The long-term goal is to reduce to a minimum the manual development of real-time software (a time consuming, error prone and expensive task), and the interfacing of these models with simulation software. These efforts have received support in approximately 1.5M$ from different funding agencies (NSERC, Precarn, CFI, OIT, CANARIE) and companies (IBM, HP, CMC, MDA, Intel). As a Co-PI Prof. Wainer participated in numerous research projects (with funding totaling over 30M$, from which approximately $1.1M have been directly spent for his research). His students have always been successful in applying to numerous scholarships and awards, and they have obtained funding for their research in excess of 500K$.
The results of his research are reflected in numerous publications: - 35 Journal papers - 4 other Journal and Magazine articles - 4 books - 8 edited proceedings - 9 book chapters - 123 Refereed Conference Proceeding Papers - 61 Work-in-progress and other refereed papers
In most of these papers, he has been the main author (or a co-author with his students, who co-authored many of these articles). He has published a number of papers in the Simulation, Practice and Experience (Elsevier), and in the Transactions of the Society for Modelling and Simulation (SCS). As Modeling and Simulation is a multidisciplinary field, he has published also in other areas: Transactions of Computational Systems Biology, Molecular Simulation, Mobile Networks and Applications; Software, Practice and Experience; Parallel Processing Letters, and Automation in Construction. His research contributions have received numerous citations (over 1,000, a large number in this research domain; he as been cited as Top-3 ranked Author in the field of Simulation -Last 10 years- by the Microsoft Academic Research site; February 1, 2011).
He has published and presented papers at some of the most prestigious conferences in Simulation worldwide. These include PADS, IEEE DS-RT, Winter Simulation Conference, the Annual Simulation Symposium and SPECTS. He has various publications in the Symposium on Theory of Modeling and Simulation (TMS/DEVS) and various conferences sponsored by SCS. He has published in other areas, including IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (Real-Time Systems); Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, Intl. Conference on short and medium bridges (building simulation); High Performance Computing and Simulation, IEEE EMBS, CMBE (biomedical); AHDS (Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems), International Conference of Web Services; Environmental Modeling and Software; International Conference in Compu-tational Science; Cellular Automata for Research and Industry (ACRI), and many others.
Up to date he supervised 2 Postdoctoral fellows, 6 Ph.D. and 47 Masters Students in total. Currently, I supervise 3 Ph.D., and 7 M. Sc. and 1 M.Eng. I have also supervised numerous visiting scholars.
The quality of my contributions has also been acknowledged through my participation in a large number of program committees (over 120) and as an invited speaker in more than 50 tutorials, keynotes and invited seminars.
As a consequence of my research activity, I have received numerous awards, including: - Outstanding Professional Award by the Society for Modeling and Simulation International (only 10 awards given since 1992). 2011. - The First Bernard P. Zeigler Modeling and Simulation Award, 2010. - Summersim Leadership Award. 2007. - Carleton University Research Achievement Award. 2005. - Numerous Best Paper Awards
Teaching:
I discovered a strong vocation for teaching in the early years of my career. In 1989, being a Teaching Assistant at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina, I started lecturing part-time in different institutions, where I had the chance to organize four different courses. Being a Head Teaching Assistant at the UBA, I organized an Operating Systems Laboratory course devoted to teach design and implementation of Operating Systems. The results of this course (including modifications and improvements to the kernel of an open-source operating system) were unique in Latin America (and one of the few worldwide, winning an international award in 1992). Later, as Instructor at the UBA, I organized new courses on Real-Time Systems, Discrete-Event Simulation and Real-Time Systems Implementation (students in these courses won awards in different contests). As Assistant Professor at the UBA, I completely reorganized the Computer Organization course with excellent results (student projects in this course were published in international conferences and in the ACM Journal of Educational Resources in Computing).
At Carleton, I have taught very challenging undergraduate courses; in particular, SYSC 2003 and SYSC 3006, which have a very large enrolment, which ranged from 70 to 250 students (since my hiring in July 2000, I have had a total enrollment of 1834 students in my courses). Despite having obtained initial teaching evaluations below my standards (in particular compared with my teaching evaluations in UBA, Argentina, which were the highest in the department), I was able to overcome this issue before obtaining my Tenure in 2003, and my teaching evaluations since then have been high (since I became Associate Professor, my teaching evaluations have an average of 4.21 for my Undergraduate courses, and an average of 4.75 for my Graduate courses). As you can see in the comments I included in my CV, students enjoy my teaching philosophy, which focuses on extensive class discussion and interaction.
I also had the opportunity to develop a completely new graduate course, which had not been offered before my appointment (SYSC-5104, Methodologies for Discrete-Event Modeling and Si-mulation). I was able to introduce my own fully developed material, and the students use in-house developed tools to study advanced Modeling and Simulation problems. As you can see in the teaching evaluations and comments included in my CV, students enjoy this course and the textbook I wrote to teach this course. The best projects in the course are usually improved after the end of the course, and many of them have been accepted for publication in international conferences. Eleven papers have been already published (the student co-authors are in bold in my list of publications). Two of them obtained awards.
In all my courses, I have invested time and effort to develop and update course materials, including detailed lecture notes. Assignments are an important part of the learning experience and the notes, assignments, sample solutions, etc. (together with additional information), are made available through course web pages.
Other teaching activities include a large number of undergraduate student supervision. I have super-vised 72 Engineering students (I currently supervise 9 more), and a large number of co-op students, NSERC undergraduate Scholars, and visiting research scholars (a total of 124 students).
I have always encouraged my students to go beyond standard expectations, and I try to persuade them to showcase their work. For instance, twelve of my undergraduate projects (4th year, coop) resulted in papers accepted for publication. Many of them participated in conferences presenting the results of their course work. A team participated in the IEEE Computer Society International Design Competition, and new teams will participate this year in Microsoft ImagineCup. I am pleased in spending the extra time these activities require, as I believe in trying to leave a positive mark on my students, while providing them with all of the possible support for their future careers.
Service: Over my years spent at Carleton University, I have been called on to participate in many activities and have been assigned various administrative duties. I am currently the SCE Departmental Web Editor, and the Director of the Research Centre on Technology Innovation (RCTI). I have partici-pated in numerous committees, including Tenure and Promotion, Scientific Advisory (V-Sim), University Supervisory Approvals Committee, Carleton University IEEE Computer Society Student Branch counselor, and the SCS Student Chapter coordinator. I was also the Department representative on the board of the School of Computer Science, and a member of the Departmental reviewing committee for Endowment, NSERC and OGS Scholarships. In addition to the above mentioned duties, I have contributed in many other ways. For example, I have been part of the evaluation committees for numerous Engineering projects, Theses, and Ph.D. Comprehensive Examinations. I initiated the Embedded Systems Group and organized around 50 seminars since I arrived in 2000.
Externally, I am servicing the academic community in different international initiatives. I am cur-rently the VP Publications of SCS (in charge of two journals, a newsletter and a magazine). I am the Special Issues Editor of the Transactions of the SCS (appointment renewed for two years), and a member of the Editorial Board of various journals. I have been a reviewer for various journals, and the organizer of numerous international conferences and workshops. In particular, I have been the chair of SummerSim twice (increasing the number of submissions in 100% in one year, and highly improving the quality of those submissions, reflected in an increase of the rejection rate in over 200% in one year). I was also a co-founder of new successful conferences: SimAUD (Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design), SimuTools, and the new Symposium of Theory of Modeling and Simulation (thes last two became some of the most successful events in the world; one devoted to simulation theory and the other to simulation tools. Both symposia receive around 100 papers every year, and after a thorough evaluation process only 30% of those get accepted for publication).
I have also been invited to be the External Examiner of 13 Ph.D. theses, and I have evaluated numerous projects in Europe, Canada and Latin America.
I hope that these comments allow the committee to form a complete picture of my various contributions as Associate Professor throughout the past four years, and I am eager to continue my academic career as a Full Professor.