Nowadays, my work for Compuware/Uniface is finished, leaving me the time to do some teaching, which I enjoy very much. Having been a full-time teacher for Desmond D'Souza's Icon Computing, I really missed that!

Information on this page:

• Current courses and projects
• Project opportunities for students
• Old projects
• See also: Master's students
• See also: Beoordeling van studenten-opdrachten (in Dutch)

Orientatie Informatie- en Communicatietechnologie

A pragmatic introduction for our new students to the process of design, implementation and documentation of a computer science project, including the need to communicate with other groups. The project that the students work on is the development of a web site. My involvement is a practical introduction to Linux as well as the guidance of nine student groups.

Teachers: Nico van Diepen, Maurice van Keulen, Corry Huys, Rick van Rein.

Info: Course information (in Dutch).

Automated generation of graphical interfaces using XML (design project)

This is a major project, in which four students invest quite some time. Their initial goal is to define a language for conceptual specification of user interfaces; probably this will become much like UIML, a similar language that they found. A transformation architecture with a few demonstrations worked out must map these specifications to an implementation. The whole project is performed (at least as much as possible) using XML technology.

Teachers: Rick van Rein, Roelof van Zwol, (Maurice van Keulen).

Students: Kristiaan Breuker, Sander Evers, Richard Brinkman, Jeroen van Nieuwenhuizen.

Info: Original assignment (in Dutch), evolving website.

I am always eager to guide students through projects which are somewhat applicable to my research. If you get a good project idea after reading my research descriptions I welcome you to step by and discuss it; what I like most in students is when they take initiatives.

In the mean time, these are some projects currently unassigned. I can imagine them being executed in many forms, by individuals or by groups, and as free assignments, master's thesis work or design projects; the kind of project will influence the amount of design, programming and research involved.

A spreadsheet with database-functionality

This project seems most suitable as a project for HE students. Spreadsheets are useful tools to construct complex numeric applications, by sheer interactive experimentation. This pleasant development paradigm is even suitable for many novices. The same novices use spreadsheets to store little databases, because they are so much simpler than real databases. In this project, we add the querying power of relational databases to a spreadsheet, to demonstrate that the concept of a spreadsheet is capable of much more than just numeric application development.

Teachers: Rick van Rein, possibly others.

Info: Description (in Dutch).

Verifiable generalisation of XSLT document transformations

This project seems most suitable as an MSc project. It involves hot technology (XML/XSLT) as well as mathematics (algebra). It aims at extending XSLT to an operator-definition language, and on the derivation of standard operator properties like commutativity and associativity. The math is not very complicated, the computer science aspects will be quite appealing.

Teachers: A selection from Rick van Rein, Roelof van Zwol, Maarten Fokkinga.

Info: Description (in Dutch).

Automatic generation of twined C code

This project may become a job for a part-time designer/programmer. The aim is generation of efficient backend code (in C, for example) from Life cycles, making use of refinement structuring and optimisation techniques. Since Life cycles have very simple semantics, there will be many opportunities for optimisation. The challenge of this project is to generate code which is as efficient as manually crafted code.

Supervisors: Rick van Rein, (?)

Info: Description (in Dutch).

Implementation of the Life cycle Checker

This project may become a job for a part-time designer/programmer. The aim is verification of life cycle properties, based on our theoretic foundation. The challenge of this design is to incorporate efficient techniques from model checking whenever possible, only resolving to theorem proving techniques in the absolute necessary situations.

Supervisors: Rick van Rein, (?)

Info: Description (in Dutch).

Authorising plug-ins for XML

This is an experimental description for an MSc project. This project aims at the design and implementation of an authorising plug-in somewhere in an XML communication path. It is supposed to filter out disallowed reads and writes, and transparently pass through anything else.

Supervisors: None yet

Info: Description (in Dutch).