Thomas A. Alspaugh

From 2002 through 2008, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine
I have moved to the Washington, DC area as of August 2008.  I'm very glad to be closer to loved ones, and excited about new opportunities.
This web site is only lightly maintained; see thomasalspaugh.org for a more up-to-date version.
at present:
Adjunct Professor Department of Computer Science Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057-1232	Visiting Assistant Researcher Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3455

Research

Thomas A. Alspaugh's research focuses on requirements methods and tools for getting the right software solution to the right human problem.  Prominent themes within his work are the interactions between law and requirements, OSS licenses, privacy, effective use of scenarios and narrative requirements, bidirectional connection between stakeholder requirements and later development phases, empirical studies and requirements research, and how stakeholders understand requirements (or fail to). 

Background

Alspaugh was an Assistant Professor in the University of California, Irvine's Department of Informatics.  He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at North Carolina State University under the direction of Annie I. Antón.  Earlier, he worked in industry as a programmer, project and team lead, and manager at Data General, IBM, and others, and was a computer scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory working on the Software Cost Reduction or A-7 project.  He earned his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill advised by David L. Parnas, and his B.A. magna cum laude in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, having begun in its School of Music. 

Alspaugh is a member of the IEEE, ACM, SIGSOFT, and ΦΒΚ.  He is actively involved in the primary Requirements Engineering conferences, having been Publicity, Workshop, and (currently) Finance Chair for the International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), and a program committee member for some years for RE, the Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ), and the Workshop on Requirements Engineering (WER).  He is a regular reviewer for TSE, TOSEM, REJ, and other journals.  His Erdős number is 4. 

Other interests and activities

Family and friends;  running, sailing, music, ballroom dance.  Raised daughter from 6 months to 6 years;  lived in France.