E. Douglas Jensen's

Real-Time for the Real World

 
Home  |  Search  |  Contact Me   
 
 

My personal manifesto about the widely misunderstood field of real-time computing...

"I don't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. It's the old ideas that frighten me."
-- John Cage


 

Introduction
About Me
Real-Time
Distributed Real-Time
Distrib. Real-Time Java
Real-Time Java
Real-Time CORBA
Real-Time Resources
Our Documents

About Me
 

E. Douglas Jensen is a Director level Consulting Engineer in the Information and Computing Division, of the Innovation and Technology Directorate, of the Command and Control Center, in the DoD FFRDC, at the MITRE Corporation's Bedford, MA, headquarters.

MITRE is a non-profit, public service, corporation charted to work in the public interest on problems of major importance. MITRE currently operates three federally funded research and development centers ("FFRDC's"). Since 1959 it has been an international leader in the systems engineering of large, complex information enterprises, especially (but not exclusively) for:  domestic and foreign military command and control, and defense intelligence; air traffic control; and modernization of federal government agencies. MITRE has over 6000 employees at approximately 70 locations in the U.S. and seven foreign countries.

Doug is widely recognized as one of the original pioneers and leading visionaries of distributed real-time computer systems. For example, he performed and led the research (the Honeywell eXperimental Distributed Processor (HXDP) [Jensen 74, 75, 78]) and technology transition leading to what is generally believed to have been the world's first deployed commercial distributed real-time computer control system product Honeywell's H930 combat data system on Taiwan's Yang (Wu Chin III) (ex-U.S. Gearing FRAM I) Class Frigates in 1976. He was also a contributor to the world's first distributed computer control system product for industrial automation, the Honeywell TDC-2000. For his seminal contributions to the field of real-time computing systems, he was honored with Honeywell's highest technical award by judges inside and outside Honeywell.
Subsequently while on the CMU CS faculty, he contributed as a consultant to the second distributed computer control system product, the Westinghouse DCS.

His principal interest is conducting applied research, advanced technology development, and technology transfer -- especially (but not limited to) in the field of dynamic, adaptive, time-critical distributed systems for control applications at all levels of an enterprise. Currently, he is assigned to the technology development and transition functionary of the USAF Electronic Systems Center (ESC/XR) at Hanscom Air Force Base. Much of his work is classified, but he and his academic collaborating co-authors have published over a hundred research papers in professional society conference proceedings and journals. His activities include:

 
bullet

Consulting for, and transitioning dynamic distributed real-time computing technologies to, next generation large scale military force projection, surveillance, battle management, and C2 systems
bullet from subsystems such as new multi-mode AESA radars
bullet to combat and surveillance platforms, in space, in the air, on the ground and sea, and undersea
bullet to network-centric warfare per se.

Leading and performing research  within MITRE and collaboratively with academia  on time-critical adaptive resource management in dynamic systems, especially distributed ones
bullet

Contributing to real-time standards that are important to dynamic and especially distributed real-time systems  e.g., leading the Distributed Real-Time Specification for Java, co-authoring the OMG Real-Time CORBA 1.2 (ne'e 2.0) specification, contributing to the OMG Real-Time CORBA 1 specification and the Real-Time Specification for Java

Doug came to MITRE in 1998 from senior research and technology leadership positions at Hewlett Packard and Digital Equipment Corp. where he led development of commercial distributed real-time products.

Prior to that, he was on the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. There he created and led the largest real-time research group of its time, one of whose achievements was the uniquely innovative Alpha distributed real-time operating system kernel. Keystone concepts and technologies from Alpha  notably time/utility function time constraints, utility accrual scheduling optimality criteria, and distributed threads have subsequently been incorporated in the OMG Real-Time CORBA 1.2 specification and Sun's Distributed Real-Time Specification for Java, and in MITRE experimental BM/C2 projects, and in several COTS operating systems, and in research projects at various universities.

Before being invited to join the CMU CS faculty, he was employed in the real-time computer industry, where he engaged in research and advanced technology development of distributed real-time computer systems, hardware, and software for the defense and industrial automation domains.

Kudos

Managers are people who do things right,
and leaders are people who do the right thing

"The literature has been clear and consistent about the attributes, roles, and contributions of leaders. In this formulation, relevant business and technical background and expertise is necessary but not sufficient—the price of admission, so to speak. It is leadership ability that is the differentiator of who will make significant, lasting, and transformational contributions to enterprises and communities. While this does not mean that managers don’t make important contributions, the sort of leadership that we’re talking about is more an orientation and a way of being than it is a set of skills or techniques. During his professional career, Doug has consistently exhibited the key attributes, roles, and contributions of transformational leaders:

bullet

Are visionary and mission oriented

bullet

Use inspiration, charisma, and inherent excitement of the vision to enroll and motivate others

bullet

Are individually and developmentally oriented

bullet

Look at old problems in new ways

bullet

Stress and value intellectual ability, problem exploration, experimentation

bullet

Are future and change oriented

bullet

Question existing culture, norms, values, and beliefs

bullet

Are risk takers"

Add to Favorites

Print Page

Download a PDF copy of this page

 

Much of what I do is classified and not publicly available, but there are technology and standards related topics that I publicly write or speak about occasionally.

For six years I have collaborated with Prof. Binoy Ravindran and his students, and been the external advisor for these students, at Virginia Tech -- the most prolific site of research on my  time/utility functions and utility accrual scheduling concepts.

 

 
 

View Site Changes  RSS feed | Site Updated 06/26/2008 |  Legal