tools-conferences.component and Object Technology Award

1999 Recipient: David Lorge Parnas

Read the award presentation speech given by Richard Mitchell.

The tools-conferences.components and Objects Prize has been awarded for the first time on the occasion of TOOLS USA '99 in Santa Barbara, California, on August 2, 1999.

The TOOLS prize honors seminal contributions to the development of object technology and component-based development. From now on, it will be awarded annually and is intended to become the most important award in the area of modern software technology. The prize currently carries a $2,000 award contributed by Bertrand Meyer, chairman of the TOOLS conference series.

The first TOOLS prize has been awarded to Professor David Lorge Parnas, Director of the Software Engineering Programme at McMaster University (Canada). Two of Parnas's pioneering articles published in 1972, introduced the notion of "information hiding" which lies at the basis of all modern approaches to software construction and in particular component and object technology. His more than 200 articles have spanned many areas of software engineering and provided contributions invaluable to anyone interested in reliable, reusable and extendible programs and program families. His work on such systems as the US Department of Defense's A7 project and the Darlington Nuclear Generation Station in Canada has shown unique insights into the application of systematic and formal techniques to the development of safety-critical systems. Throughout his career and publications, Dr. Parnas has provided leadership in reconciling the theory of software engineering with the practice of industrial software development.

Dr. Parnas has been Professor at the University of Victoria, the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, and honorary doctorates from the ETH in Zurich and the Catholic University of Louvain.

At TOOLS USA '99, Dr. Parnas presented a Keynote Lecture on the theme Tools for Component Documentation, Analysis and Testing and a Tutorial on the theme Systematic Techniques for Inspecting Critical Software, both on Monday, August 2. The TOOLS prize will be awarded to him on the occasion of his keynote.

TOOLS (Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems) is the major international practitioner-oriented event in the field of object technology, component-based development, and modern software technologies. Held regularly since 1989, TOOLS has regular sessions in the US, Europe, Australia and China, with proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society. Past sessions have featured all the international leaders in the field; TOOLS USA '99 is the most complete conference to date with more than 60 invited lectures, tutorials and scientific contributions by authors from more than 15 countries on all aspects of new software technology.

For more information, contact us at tools@tools-conferences.com.