James R. (Jim) Cordy

Biographical Information

Biographical Sketch Academic Degrees Honours and Awards

Current Appointments Previous Academic and Industrial Experience Professional Service

Biographical Sketch

Jim Cordy is Professor and past Director of the School of Computing at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In 1985 Dr. Cordy co-founded Holt Software Associates (HSA), a Toronto-based company specializing in educational software systems, and from 1995 to 2000 he was vice president and chief research scientist at Legasys Corporation, a software technology company specializing in legacy software system analysis and renovation.

Dr. Cordy is a founding member of the Software Technology Laboratory at Queen's University. From 1991 to 1997 he led the Software Design Technology project, a multi-university research project in software architecture research funded by the Information Technology Research Centre (ITRC, now CITO, an Ontario government Centre of Excellence). As project leader Dr. Cordy was winner of the 1994 ITRC Bank of Montreal Innovation Excellence Award and the 1995 ITRC Chair's Award for Entrepreneurship in Technology Innovation.

Prof. Cordy is the author or co-author of numerous contributions in computer software systems, including the PL/I subset compiler SP/k (1977), the Toronto Euclid compiler (1980), the S/SL compiler technology (1980), the Concurrent Euclid programming language (1981), the Turing programming language (1983), Turing Plus (1985), Object-Oriented Turing (1992), the orthogonal code generation compiler technology (1986), the TXL programming language (1991), the TXL source transformation system (1995), the LS/2000 year 2000 conversion system (1996), and the LS/AMT software analysis and migration system (1999). He has published more than 100 refereed academic and technical papers in software engineering, programming languages, user interfaces, compiler technology and pattern recognition, including the books "Introduction to Compiler Construction Using S/SL" (Queen's, 1986) and "The Turing Programming Language: Design and Definition" (Prentice-Hall, 1988).

Dr. Cordy received his BSc in computer science and mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1973 and his MSc in computer science in 1976. After serving several years as chief programmer and senior research associate at the Computer Systems Research Institute of the University of Toronto, he returned to school and received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1986. Following ten years at Queen's University he left to found Legasys Corporation in 1995 where he was vice president and chief research officer until his return to Queen's in 2001.

Dr. Cordy is a past member and chair of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) grant selection committee in Computing and Information Science, a recent distinguished scientist member of the NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Awards Committee and an emeritus member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.4, "software implementation technology." He is a registered professional engineer, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Distinguished Scientist member of the Association for Computing Machinery and an IBM Visiting Scientist and Faculty Fellow.

Prof. Cordy recently served as program co-chair of the IEEE 2002 and 2008 International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM), the IEEE 2005 International Workshop on Program Comprehension (IWPC 2005) and the IBM 2005 Centre for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON 2005). He served as industrial co-chair of the IEEE 2002, 2004 and 2005 International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM ), as co-organizer of the Dagstuhl International Seminar on Transformation Techniques in Software Engineering (2005), and as program chair of the IEEE 4th International Conference on Computer Languages (ICCL'92). He serves on the program committees of numerous conferences and workshops in software systems and languages, on the editorial board of several journals, books and special issues, and as session chair at many conferences.

In 1990-91 Dr. Cordy was invited to be guest researcher at GMD (now part of the Fraunhofer Institute), the German National Institute for Computer Science, in Karlsruhe, Germany, and in 2004-05 he was again invited as guest researcher, at the Automated Reasoning Systems Division of ITC-IRST, the Provincial Center for Scientific and Technological Research in Trento, Italy.

Academic Degrees

Ph.D. 1986, University of Toronto, "An Orthogonal Model for Code Generation"

M.Sc. 1976, University of Toronto, "A Diagrammatic Approach to Programming Language Semantics"

B.Sc. 1973, University of Toronto, Mathematics & Computer Science

Current Academic and Industrial Appointments

1996-present		Professor		School of Computing, Queen's University at Kingston
2001-present		Professor (cross-appointed)		Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queen's University at Kingston

Previous Academic and Industrial Experience

2002-07		Director		School of Computing, Queen's University at Kingston
2004-05		Visiting Researcher		Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (ITC-IRST), Trento, Italy
2001-03		President and CEO		TXL Software Research Inc., Kingston
1995-2000		Co-founder, Chairman and Vice President		Legasys Corporation, Kingston
1995-99		Adjunct Professor		Department of Computer Science, York University, Toronto
1989-96		Associate Professor		Department of Computing and Information Science, Queen's University at Kingston
1990-91		Visiting Researcher		Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (National Research Institute in Mathematics and Computer Science), Karlsruhe, Germany
1986-2007		Co-founder and Director		Holt Software Associates Inc., Toronto
1985-89		Assistant Professor		Department of Computing and Information Science,Queen's University at Kingston
1983-85		Lecturer		Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
1974-83		Research Associate		Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto

Academic and Professional Honours

2010

SCAM 2010 Reviewer Award, September 2010.

2009

IBM Center for Advanced Studies Faculty Fellow of the Year, Novermber 2009.

2008

Elected ACM Distinguished Scientist, October 2008.

IBM International Faculty Award, July 2008.

Queen's University Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision, October 2008.

WCRE 2008 Best Reviewer Award, October 2008.

2007

ICPC 2007 Best Reviewer Award, July 2007.

2005

Elected Senior Member of IEEE, January 2005.

1995

ITRC (Information Technology Research Centre, an Ontario Centre of Excellence) Chair's Award for Entrepreneurship in Technology Innovation, September 1995.

1994

ITRC Bank of Montreal Innovation Excellence Award, September 1994, as leader of the Software Design Technology Project, with R.C. Holt, D.A. Lamb and A. Malton.

1988

R.C. Holt (Project leader), Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) Information Technology Innovation Award, 1988, for the Turing Programming Language, with J.R. Cordy.

1985

Elected member of IFIP Working Group 2.4, Software Implementation Technology.

Professional Service

Conference Committees

Member of Program Committee,
CASCON 2010, IBM 20th Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, Toronto, November 2010.

Member of Organizing Committee,
SPW 2010, First Symposium on the Personal Web, Toronto, November 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
SLE 2010, International Conference on Software Language Engineering, Eindhoven, Netherlands, October 2010.

Co-chair of Doctoral Symposium,
WCRE 2010, 17th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Beverly, MA, USA, October 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
ICSM 2010, IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Maintenance, Timisoara, Romania, September 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2010, IEEE 10th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Timisoara, Romania, September 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
ICPC 2010, IEEE 18th International Conference on Program Comprehension, Braga, Portugal, June 2010.

Member of Workshops Committee,
ICSE 2010, 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering, Cape Town, South Africa, May 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
IWSC 2010, 4th International Workshop on Software Clones, Cape Town, South Africa, May 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
Mutation 2010, 5th International Workshop on Mutation Analysis, Paris, April 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
CSMR 2010, 14th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, Madrid, Spain, March 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
PEPM 2010, ACM SIGPLAN 2010 Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation, Madrid, Spain, January 2010.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2009, 16th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Lille, France, October 2009.

Organizing Committee Chair,
SITCON 2009, CAS / NSERC Strategic Workshop on Smart Internet Technologies, Toronto, November 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2009, IEEE 9th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Edmonton, September 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
ICSM 2009, IEEE 25th International Conference on Software Maintenance, Edmonton, September 2009.

Member of Scientific Committee,
GTTSE 2009, Summer School on Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering, Braga, Portugal, July 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
ICPC 2009, IEEE 17th International Conference on Program Comprehension, Vancouver, May 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
CSMR 2009, 13th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, Kaiserslautern, Germany, April 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
IWSC 2009, 3rd International Workshop on Software Clones, Kaiserslautern, Germany, April 2009.

Member of Program Committee,
Mutation 2009, 4th International Workshop on Mutation Analysis, Denver, USA, April 2009.

Member of Steering Committee,
SLE, International Conference on Software Language Engineering, 2008-2011.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2008, 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Antwerp, Belgium, October 2008.

Program Co-chair,
SCAM 2008, IEEE 8th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Beijing, September 2008.

Member of Program Committee,
ICPC 2008, IEEE 16th International Conference on Program Comprehension, Amsterdam, June 2008.

Member of Program Committee,
STSM 2008, International Workshop on Semantic Technologies in System Maintenance, Amsterdam, June 2008.

Member of Program Committee,
CSMR 2008, 12th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, Athens, April 2008.

Member of Steering Committee,
SCAM, IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2007-2010.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2007, 14th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Vancouver, October 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
CASCON 2007, IBM 17th Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, Toronto, October 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
ICSM 2007, IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Maintenance, Paris, October 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2007, IEEE 7th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Paris, October 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
ATEM 2007, 4th International Workshop on Language Engineering, Nashville, September 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
Mutation 2007, 3rd International Workshop on Mutation Analysis, Windsor, UK, September 2007.

Member of Scientific Committee,
GTTSE 2007, Summer School on Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering, Braga, Portugal, July 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
ICPC 2007, IEEE 15th International Conference on Program Comprehension, Banff, June 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
PEPM 2007, ACM SIGPLAN 2007 Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation, Nice, France, January 2007.

Member of Program Committee,
CASCON 2006, IBM 16th Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, Toronto, October 2006.

Co-organizer,
STS 2006, GPCE Workshop on Software Transformation Systems, Portland, Oregon, October 2006.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2006, IEEE 13th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Benevento, Italy, October 2006.

Member of Program Committee,
ICSM 2006, IEEE 22nd International Conference on Software Maintenance, Philadelphia, September 2006.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2006, IEEE 6th International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Philadelphia, September 2006.

Member of Program Committee,
ICPC 2006, IEEE 14th International Conference on Program Comprehension, Athens, June 2006.

Member of Program Committee,
LDTA 2006, ACM 6th International Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications, Vienna, April 2006.

Chair of Steering Committee,
IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension, 2005-07, member 2007-08.

Member of Steering Committee,
CASCON, IBM Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, 2005-08.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2005, IEEE 12th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Pittsburgh, November 2005.

Program Co-chair,
CASCON 2005, IBM 15th Centre for Advanced Studies Conference, Toronto, October 2005.

Member of Program Committee and Industrial Track Co-chair,
ICSM 2005, IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Budapest, September 2005.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2005, IEEE 5th International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Budapest, September 2005.

Member of Scientific Committee,
GTTSE 2005, Summer School on Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering, Braga, Portugal, July 2005.

Program Co-chair,
IWPC 2005, IEEE 13th International Workshop on Program Comprehension, St. Louis, May 2005.

Co-Organizer,
Dagstuhl International Seminar on Transformation Techniques in Software Engineering, Dagstuhl, Germany, April 2005.

Member of Program Committee,
LDTA 2005, ACM 5th International Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications, Edinburgh, April 2005.

Member of Program Committee,
WCRE 2004, IEEE 11th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Delft, Netherlands, November 2004.

Co-organizer,
SET 2004, International Workshop on Software Evolution Transformations, Delft, Netherlands, November 2004.

Member of Program Committee,
GPCE 2004, ACM 3rd International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering, Vancouver, October 2004.

Co-organizer,
STS 2004, GPCE Workshop on Software Transformation Systems, Vancouver, October 2004.

Industrial Track Chair,
ICSM 2004, IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Chicago, September 2004.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2004, IEEE 4th International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Chicago, September 2004.

Member of Program Committee,
IWPC 2004, IEEE 12th International Workshop on Program Comprehension, Bari, Italy, June 2004.

Member of Steering Committee,
IWPC, IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension, 2003-2006.

Member of Program Committee,
SCAM 2003, IEEE 3rd International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Amsterdam, October 2003.

Member of Program Committee,
RULE'03, ACM SIGPLAN 4th Workshop on Rule-Based Programming, Valencia, Spain, June 2003.

Member of Steering Committee,
SCAM, IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2002-2005.

Industrial Track Co-Chair,
ICSM 2002, IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Montreal, October 2002.

Program Co-Chair,
SCAM 2002, IEEE 2nd International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Montreal, October 2002.

Member of Program Committee,
RULE'02, ACM SIGPLAN 3rd Workshop on Rule-Based Programming, Pittsburgh, October 2002.

Workshop Co-Organizer,
IFIP Working Group 2.4 Meeting, Banff, September 1999.

Member of Program Committee,
Systems Implementation 2000, IFIP 1998 Working Conference on Systems Implementation, Berlin, February 1998.

Member of Program Committee,
CASE'95, IEEE 7th International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering, Toronto, July 1995.

Member of Program Committee,
ICCL'94, IEEE 5th International Conference on Computer Languages, Toulouse, May 1994.

Program Chair,
ICCL'92, IEEE 4th International Conference on Computer Languages, Oakland, April 1992.

Workshop Organizer,
IFIP Working Group 2.4 Meeting, Kingston, May 1990.

Editing of Journals

Guest Co-Editor,
Special Issue on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Journal of Information and Software Technology 51,10 (October 2009).

Guest Co-Editor,
Special Issue on Program Comprehension, Software Quality Journal 14,3 (September 2006).

Guest Co-Editor,
Special Issue on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Journal of Automated Software Engineering 11,1 (January 2004).

Member of Editorial Board,
Journal of Programming Languages, Chapman and Hall, London, 1991-1998.

Guest Editor,
Special Issue on ICCL'92, Computer Languages 19, 2 (April 1993).

Membership in Professional Societies and Working Groups

Registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng.),
Professional Engineers Ontario (software engineering).

Elected Member Emeritus,
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.4.

Senior Member,
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IEEE Computer Society.

Distinguished Scientist Member,
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), ACM SIGPLAN, SIGCHI, SIGSOFT.

Refereeing of Journals, Conferences and Books

Over the past tewnty-five years I have served as referee for hundreds of technical papers as well as several textbooks and research monographs. Journals and conferences for which I have served as referee include:

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems ,
Communications of the ACM,
Computer Languages,
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
IEEE Software,
Information Processing Letters,
Journal of Automated Software Engineering,
Journal of Information and Software Technology,
Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution,
Journal of Programming Languages,
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing,
Science of Computer Programming,
Software-Practice and Experience,
Software Quality Journal,
Software Testing, Verification and Reliability,
Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).

ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Compiler Construction,
ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Interpreters and Interpretive Techniques,
ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI),
IBM Centers for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON),
International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE),
International Conference on Computer Languages (ICCL),
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE),
International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM),
International Workshop on Practical Software Development Environments,
International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE),
International Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications (LDTA)
International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC),
Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE),
International Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation (PEPM),
International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM),
Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE).

Reviewing of Research Applications and Proposals

Chair,Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Awards Panel (ERA), 2008-09.

Member,Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Awards Panel (ERA), 2007-06.

Member, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Selection Committee, 2005-06.

Member, Swedish Research Council (Vetenkapsradet) Research Review Panel, 2004.

Member, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Selection Committee, 2003-04.

Member, College of Reviewers, Canada Research Chairs Program, 2000-present.

Member, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Grant Selection Committee 330 (Computing & Information Science 'A'), 2000-01.

Chair, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Grant Selection Committee 330 (Computing & Information Science 'A'), 1999-2000.

Member, NSERC Grant Selection Committee 07 (Computing & Information Science), 1997-1999.

In addition, over the past fifteen years I have served as reviewer for more than 50 operating, equipment, strategic and collaborative grant applications for NSERC, as well as for six large U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) grant applications, three ASERC and iCORE grant applications and two ESPRIT grant applications. I have served as external reviewer for five departmental evaluations at other universities and institutes and three times provided detailed reviews of my own department.

Evaluations for Appointment, Tenure, Promotion, Scholarship and Employment

Over the past 25 years I have written more than 100 evaluations of colleagues and others for appointment, tenure and promotion at Queen's and elsewhere. In that same time I have provided more than 400 letters of recommendation for present and former graduate students as well as hundreds of evaluations of graduates and undergraduates for scholarships, bursaries, employment and graduate school.

Last updated 8 January 2011