About



I am a Professor of Software Engineering in the School of Computing & Communications at the Open University, UK.  I started at the Open University in 2006, with an appointment as a lecturer in computing in Faculty of Maths & Computing. Currently, I lead the Responsible Software Engineering stream of the OU’s Centre for Protecting Women Online, am a member of the steering group for the  Centre for Policing Research and Learning and am Associate Dean and Director of STEM Research. 

I am a member of the Software Engineering & Design research group, where I am involved in projects that undertake interdisciplinary research to bridge software engineering with social psychology, business strategy, human computer interaction, healthcare and machine learning, ensured the success of these projects. As a result, I am able apply my research to application domains that include online social networks, enterprise systems, policing,  the internet of things, and mobile applications. Further details can by found on my Open University profile.

I completed my PhD in Sep 2005 under the supervision of Dr. Emil Lupu and Dr. Alessandra Russo at Imperial College London, where I was also a research associate (2001-2006). Between 1998 and 2001 I worked as a Software Engineer for Sapient Corporation having obtained an MEng in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College London in 1998.

Prior to that I was educated at Royton and Crompton School (Oldham, UK), Dharmaraja College (Kandy, Sri Lanka) and St. Thomas' College (Bandarawela, Sri Lanka)


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Cloud Wedge - geek of the week

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CloudWedge: 'Geek of the Week' My colleague Yijun Yu recently wrote a opinion piece for The Conversation about how cloud computing could have made a difference to the search for Malayian Airlines MH370.  Essentially the question he poses is: why, in the age of global internet connectivity (including now onboard planes!), do we depend on the onboard flight data recorder for information about what happens on a plane? Of course there are numerous challenges with this - not least the cost of bandwidth for all the flight data (including cockpit audio) to be uploaded in real time and the security of the data.  Yijun's article addresses some aspects of the latter, and the former is not an insurmountable problem.  For example it should be possible to upload basic flight telemetry (e.g., GPS location, air speed, engine statistics and fuel data) without requiring significant bandwidth.  Indeed aero engine manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce deployed engine monitoring systems
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Priming Code Club

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Cyber security by the rest of us ...

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Breakdown of cyber crime types reported by learners in Week 1 As part of the Introduction to Cyber Security MOOC , we asked learners to review their computer security practices at the start of their learning by completing a simple online survey / self-audit.  Over 9100 learners completed the survey in Week 1 of the course, highlighting some interesting findings. For example, although 84% of respondents had configured their computers to require a password on startup, 30% did not 'lock' their computer so that it required the password to be re-entered if they left it unattended. With regard to password management, 55% of respondents depended on their memory for storing passwords, whereas 26% used software (password manager / web browser) to manage their passwords.  It is noteworthy that 18% reported that they write their passwords down and 59% reuse the same username / password across multiple websites. It was reassuring to note that 90% of learners who completed the
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