David A. Wheeler

I'm a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in the Computer and Software Engineering Division (CSED).

My professional interests are in improving software development practices for higher-risk (large and safety-critical) software systems. This includes software risk assessment, process improvement, inspections, object-oriented (OO) approaches, defect detection and prevention techniques, software engineering tools and environments, the Internet, POSIX, Ada, C++, and Java.

My personal interests (besides computing) include American Sign Language, downhill skiing, science fiction (including Star Trek), and Music (I play the piano/keyboard, euphonium, tuba, guitar, and I sing bass). I'm an Eagle Scout. Most important to me, I'm a Christian.

Pictures of me, large and small, are available.

Here's how to contact me:

David A. Wheeler
Institute for Defense Analyses/CSED
1801 N. Beauregard St.
Alexandria, VA 22311-1772 (USA)
Phone: (703) 845-6662; FAX (703) 845-6848
Email: wheeler@ida.org

Employment (Abbreviated)

• 1987-present, IDA/CSED, Research Staff Member.

  Led and contributed to various teams to evaluate important software development projects, products, and techniques. These include BMDO, THAAD, Patriot PAC-3, BSY-2, software engineering environments (SEEs), CASE tools, and inspections. Provided recommendations based on these evaluations to various sponsors. Led or contributed to development of software in various languages.

• 1985-present, PSE (Computer Consulting Firm), Owner. Developed software in various languages, and solved diverse kinds of computer-related problems.
• 1982-1984, Computer Sales & Service.

Education

• George Mason University, M.S., Computer Science, 1993.
• George Mason University, Certificate in Software Systems Engineering, 1993.
• Software Engineering Institute, Software Capability Evaluation Training, 1993, 1994.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, `Design and Analysis of Distributed Protocols' (Summer Session), 1994.
• George Mason University, B.S., Electronics Engineering, 1987.

Professional Activities

• Member, IEEE Standard 1028 Working Group.
• Volunteer Reviewer, Ada 9X.
• Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
• Member, IEEE Computer Society.
• Member, IEEE Computer Society Committee on the Engineering of Complex Computer Systems.

Honors

• Computer Science Graduate Honor Roll Award.
• Graduation with Distinction.
• Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society.
• George Washington University Engineering Award.
• Eagle Scout Award.

Most of my work is not available on the Internet at this time. That includes my published papers. Items I've developed that are available on the Internet are generally Ada-related or WWW-related, including:

• Lovelace (a free Ada 95 tutorial),
• Mklesson (a free WWW tutorial generator),
• Package CGI (an Ada 95 binding to a WWW server),
• Program Small (a demo Ada 95 program)
• Ada2html (this tool transforms Ada 95 source code into HTML documents).

I'm also an author of an upcoming book to be published by the IEEE. The book is Software Inspection: An Industry Best Practice by David A. Wheeler, Bill Brykczynski, and Reg Meeson. This upcoming book describes the software inspection process and includes a number of papers on the topic, including results from many different users of the process.