Alistair McEwan

• First Year Tutor
• Staff/student liason chair

Lecturer in Real-Time Systems and Software Engineering
Embedded Systems Group

BSc (Abdn), DPhil (Oxon)
T: +44 (0)116 252 2672
F: +44 (0)116 252 2619
E: alistair.mcewan@le.ac.uk

Location: Room 9, R Block, Engineering

Biography and Main Research Interests:
Alistair McEwan was born in Dundee, Scotland. He received a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Aberdeen, and a DPHil from the University of Oxford. He joined the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester in 2007 as a New Blood Lecturer in Real-Time systems and Software Engineering. Prior to this, he held several post-dotoral research fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, Kent, and Surrey. His reserch interests focus on the development and application of sound Engineering principles to the design, development, and verification of dependable systems---systems where high levels of assurance in the behaviours (and misbehaviours) are needed. Such systems may be, for instance, safety-critical or fault-tolerant systems implemented in either hardware or software, or a combination of both in reconfigurable hardware. Specific research topics include:
• Software Engineering and Formal Methods, particularly CSP, Z, and B.
• Unification and integration of Formal Methods, including Hoare’s Unifying Theory of Programming.
• Techniques for systems specification and calculated development of high assurance systems.
• Tools for verification and implementation including modelchecking and theorem proving.
• Implementation languages and platforms for dependable systems.
• The theory, practice, application, and calculation of concurrency.
• Hardware Compilation and Co-Design.

Current Research Projects:
“Synchronous Languages for Co-Design Systems”: this project commenced in 2009, and is funded jointly by Microsoft Research Cambridge and the EPSRC. It is investigating the
applicability of various synchronous and concurrent programming langauges for FPGA development, and the relationship of those langauges to a variety of formal Software
Engineering techniques.

“System Modelling and Integration for High Assurance Systems”: this project commenced in 2009, and is funded jointly by the Atomic Weapons  establishment and the EPSRC. It is investigating the applicability of Formal Methods to the modelling and verification of systems incorporating software, hardware, and physical components---particularly in the case where error or component failure must not lead to unmitigated misbehaviours. 

“Systems Life Cycle and Requirements Maintenance”: this project commenced in 2009 and is funded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment. It is investigating the traceability and
maintainability of system requirements through a long-term product life cycle and maintenance programme---particularly in the case where high-assurance properties may depend upon implicit, partially understood, or even legacy requirements.

Recent Publications:
• Alistair A. McEwan and P. H. Welch (eds). Special Edition from Communicating Process Architectures: Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2009. To appear.
• Alistair A. McEwan. Calculating Concurrency Using Circus. Invited chapter in Process Algebra for Parallel and Distributed Processing, CRC Press, 2009.
• Alistair A.McEwan. Unifying Theories of Interrupts. In A. Butterfield (eds), Unifying Theories of Programming 2008/9, LNCS, to appear.
• Alistair A. McEwan and Steve Schneider. Modelling and Analysis of the AMBA bus using CSP and B. In Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2009.
• Alistair A. McEwan, Steve Schneider, Helen Treharne, and Wilson Ifill. Experiments in translating CSP-B to Handel-C. In Communicating Process Architectures 2008, IOS Press. P.H.Welch, S. Stepney, F. A. C. Polack, F. R. M. Barnes, A. A. McEwan, G. S. Styles, J. F. Broenink, and A. T. Sampson. Communicating Process Architectures 2008, IOS Press.
• Alistair A. McEwan and Jim Woodcock. Unifying Theories of Interrupts. In Proceedings of the second UTP Symposium, Trinity College Dublin, www.cs.tcd.ie/utpo8/