Professor Gordon Blair

Distinguished Professor

My Role

Director of the HighWire Centre for Doctoral Training

Profile

Gordon Blair is a Distinguished Professor of Distributed Systems in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University and is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø in Norway. He has published over 300 papers in his field and is on the PCs of many major international conferences in middleware and distributed systems. He is also chair of the steering committee of the ACM/ IFIP/ Usenix Middleware series of conferences. His current research interests include distributed systems architecture, middleware (including reflective and adaptive middleware), model-driven engineering techniques applied to adaptive distributed systems, and the applicability of contemporary distributed systems technologies (including cloud computing and the Internet of Things) to environmental science. He is co-author of the highly successful book Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design by Coulouris, Dollimore, Kindberg and Blair with the 5th edition published in 2011. He is also Director of the HighWire Centre for Doctoral Training, a PhD programe taking a cross-disciplinary perspective on innovation as it relates to the digital economy, and is co-editor in chief of Springer's Journal of Internet Services and Applications.

Research Overview

My core research focuses on the area of distributed systems and, more specifically, on the middleware architectures that underpin complex distributed systems applications and services. This includes examination of key distributed properties such as interoperability and how this can be achieved in the complex and dynamic distributed systems of today.

I have a strong interest in more applied areas of computing including how innovations in distributed systems, for example cloud computing and ubiquitous computing, can support environmental scientists in tackling global problems such as climate change. I also have interests in more general applicability of digital innovation in the digital economy.

Current Teaching

CSc 253: Distributed Systems (Undergraduate) CSM 02: Advanced Distributed Systems (Masters)

Career Details

Academic qualifications:

Ph.D. Computer Science, Strathclyde 1983

B.Sc. Computer Science, Strathclyde 1980 (1^st Class Hons)

Employment:

Professor of Distributed Systems, School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, 1996 to present

Professional Role

Chair of the Steering Committee of the ACM/ IFIP/ USENIX Middleware Series of Conferences from April 2005 to date (and member of the steering committee since co-founding the event in 1998).

Co Editor-in-Chief, Springer Journal of Internet Systems and Applications (JISA), Sept. 2009 to date.

Member of the Editorial Board of Software and Systems Models (SoSyM), Springer, December 2006 to date.

Member of the Editorial Board of Software: Practice and Experience, June 2007 to date.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interesting in supervising PhD students on a range of topics related to:Distributed systems generally including cloud computing and middleware;Environmental informatics including the role of cloud computing in supporting environmental scientists;The digital economy, especially areas related to digital innovations and their impact on business or society (see the HighWire CDT - highwire.lancs.ac.uk);The role of models at run-time in supporting the engineering of distributed systems.

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Selected Publications Show all 267 publications

The Role of Ontologies in Emergent Middleware: Supporting Interoperability in Complex Distributed Systems
Blair, G., Bennaceur, A., Georgantas, N., Grace, P., Issarny, V., Nundloll-Ramdhany, V., Paolucci, M. 12/2011 In: Proceedings of ACM/IFIP/USENIX 12th International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2011). Berlin : Springer Verlag p. 410-430. 21 p.
Paper

Experiences with open overlays: a middleware approach to network heterogeneity
Grace, P., Hughes, D., Porter, B., Blair, G.S., Coulson, G., Taiani, F. 2008 In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems 2008 (Eurosys '08). New York : ACM p. 123-136. 14 p.
Paper

A generic component model for building systems software
Coulson, G., Blair, G., Grace, P., Taiani, F., Joolia, A., Lee, K., Ueyama, J., Sivaharan, T. 02/2008 In: ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. 26, 1, p. 1-42. 43 p.
Journal article

The Case for Reflective Middleware.
Blair, G.S., Campbell, R.H., Costa, F., Kon, F. 1/06/2002 In: Communications of the ACM. 45, 6, p. 33-38. 6 p.
Journal article