![Fred Brown](/sites/default/files/styles/profile_large/public/profile-images/444.jpeg?itok=6s68Ycli)
Dr Fred Brown
Adjunct Senior Lecturer
School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology
I am an adjunct Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at The University of Adelaide. I am also a Chartered Member of the British Computer Society, a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Scientist and a member of the ACM. I received a PhD from St Andrews University in Scotland, for my work in Persistent Object Systems. My research interests have included programming language design, type systems, data intensive applications, business information systems and bioinformatics.
- My Research
- Career
- Publications
- Grants and Funding
- Teaching
- Supervision
- Professional Activities
- Contact
My research interests have an essentially computer systems focus, that is, I like building useful tools for others to use by applying over 30 years of computer systems experience to interesting problems. Over time, this has included designing and implementing complete programming systems, virtual machines, compilers, garbage collection algorithms and stable storage systems.
An example, in the area of bioinformatics, is the interesting challenge of large scale suffix tree construction algorithms. A suffix tree is just a compressed trie of all suffixes (substrings ending at the end of a string) in a string. If you can build one, you can implement solutions to lots of interesting string problems very efficiently. Large scale suffix tree construction is a particularly interesting problem from a systems point of view, as the linear time algorithm exhibits what is effectively random memory access. Random memory access is really bad when things either don't fit into your CPU caches, or worse still don't fit into main memory either.
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Appointments
Date Position Institution name 2011 - 2014 Business Analyst The University of Adelaide 2000 - 2005 Associate Dean (Information Technology) The University of Adelaide 1992 - 2018 Senior Lecturer The University of Adelaide 1991 - 1992 Lecturer The University of St Andrews 1991 - 1991 SERC Post Doctoral Research Fellow The University of St Andrews 1990 - 1991 Lecturer The University of St Andrews 1988 - 1990 Post Doctoral Fellow The University of St Andrews 1986 - 1988 Research Assistant - Persistent Information Space Architectures The University of St Andrews 1984 - 1991 Warning Officer United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation 1983 - 1986 Research Assistant - Computer Graphics Tools The University of St Andrews 1978 - 1984 Observer Royal Observer Corps -
Education
Date Institution name Country Title 1983 - 1988 The University of St Andrews Scotland PhD 1979 - 1983 The University of St Andrews Scotland BSc(Hons) 1st Class, Computational Science
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Journals
Year Citation 2018 Banjar, H., Adelson, D., Brown, F., & Chaudhri, N. (2018). Corrigendum: Intelligent techniques using molecular data analysis in leukaemia: An opportunity for personalized medicine support system (BioMed Research International (2017) 2017 (12) DOI: 10.1155/2017/3587309). BioMed Research International, 2018, 1 page.
2017 Banjar, H., Adelson, D., Brown, F., & Leclercq, T. (2017). Personalized medicine support system : resolving conflict in allocation to risk groups and predicting patient molecular response to targeted therapy. Health Informatics - An International Journal, 6(2), 1-21.
2017 Banjar, H., Adelson, D., Brown, A., & Chaudhri, N. (2017). Intelligent techniques using molecular data analysis in leukaemia: an opportunity for personalized medicine support system. BioMed Research International, 2017, 3587309-1-3587309-21.
Scopus10 WoS9 Europe PMC52017 Banjar, H., Ranasinghe, D., Brown, F., Adelson, D., Kroger, T., Leclercq, T., . . . Chaudhri, N. (2017). Modelling predictors of molecular response to frontline imatinib for patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia. PLoS ONE, 12(1), 1-23.
Scopus5 WoS3 Europe PMC32008 Jones, C., Schwerdt, J., Bretag, T., Baumann, U., & Brown, A. (2008). GOSLING: a rule-based protein annotator using BLAST and GO. Bioinformatics, 24(22), 2628-2629.
Scopus12 WoS9 Europe PMC62007 Jones, C., Brown, A., & Baumann, U. (2007). Estimating the annotation error rate of curated GO database sequence annotations. BMC Bioinformatics, 8(170), WWW 1-WWW 9.
Scopus114 WoS104 Europe PMC822005 Jones, C., Baumann, U., & Brown, A. (2005). Automated methods of predicting the function of biological sequences using GO and BLAST. BMC Bioinformatics, 6(272), WWW 1-WWW 10.
Scopus40 WoS37 Europe PMC261991 Morrison, R., Dearle, A., Connor, R. C. H., & Brown, A. L. (1991). An Ad Hoc Approach to the Implementation of Polymorphism. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), 13(3), 342-371.
Scopus28 WoS111990 Morrison, R., Atkinson, M. P., Brown, A. L., & Dearle, A. (1990). On the classification of binding mechanisms. Information Processing Letters, 34(1), 51-55.
Scopus5 WoS31988 Morrison, R., Atkinson, M. P., Brown, A. L., & Dearle, A. (1988). Bindings in Persistent Programming Languages. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 23(4), 27-34.
Scopus3 WoS11988 Dearle, A., & Brown, A. L. (1988). Safe browsing in a strongly typed persistent environment. Computer Journal, 31(6), 540-544.
Scopus12 WoS61987 Morrison, R., Brown, A. L., Carrick, R., Connor, R. C. H., Dearle, A., & Atkinson, M. P. (1987). POLYMORPHISM, PERSISTENCE AND SOFTWARE RE-USE IN A STRONGLY TYPED OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT.. Software engineering journal, 2(6), 199-204.
Scopus7 WoS11986 Morrison, R., Brown, A. L., Bailey, P. J., Davie, A. J. T., & Dearle, A. (1986). A persistent graphics facility for the ICL PERQ. Software: Practice and Experience, 16(4), 351-367.
Scopus3 WoS11986 Morrison, R., Florianis, A. L., Dearle, A., & Atkinson, M. P. (1986). An Integrated Graphics Programming Environment. Computer Graphics Forum, 5(2), 147-157.
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Book Chapters
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Conference Papers
Year Citation 2004 Brown, A. (2004). Constructing chromosome scale suffix trees. In Y. Chen (Ed.), Bioinformatics 2004: 2nd Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (pp. 105-112). NSW, Australia: Australian Computer Society Inc. 2001 Brown, A. (2001). Incremental garbage collection in massive object stores. In Michael Oudshoorn (Ed.), Proceedings of the 24th Australasian Computer Science Conference ACSC 2001 (pp. 38-46). LOS ALAMITOS, CALIFORNIA, USA: IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY. 2001 Munro, D., & Brown, A. (2001). Evaluating partition selection policies using the PMOS garbage collector. In G. Kirby, A. Dearle, & D. Sjoberg (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop, POS-9 Vol. 2135 (pp. 125-137). GERMANY: SPRINGER-VERLAG.
2000 Brown, A., & Munro, D. (2000). PMOS Revitalised. In C. Barter, & D. Munro (Eds.), Proceedings of The Seventh IDEA International Workshop (pp. 68-71). Adelaide, Australia: University of Adelaide. 2000 LewKewLin, K., & Brown, A. (2000). A model of persistent software composition. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Australasian Computer Science Conference ACSC 2000 (pp. 143-149). Los Alamitos, California, USA: IEEE Computer Society.
2000 Brown, A. (2000). Exposing memory mapped I/O using NFS. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Australasian Computer Science Conference ACSC 2000 (pp. 17-23). Los Alamitos, California, USA: IEEE Computer Society.
1996 Oudshoorn, M. J., Brown, A. L., & Maciunas, K. J. (1996). Simulating real-life software engineering situations in the classroom. In Proceedings - 1996 International Conference Software Engineering: Education and Practice, SEEP 1996 (pp. 20-25). IEEE Comput. Soc. Press.
Scopus31996 Maciunas, K. J., Oudshoorn, M. J., & Brown, A. L. (1996). Process improvement of software engineering education. In ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (pp. 66-73). ACM Press.
1989 Morrison, R., Brown, A. L., Carrick, R., Connor, R., Dearle, A., Livesey, M. J., . . . Hurst, A. J. (1989). Language-design issues in supporting process-oriented computation in persistent environments. In Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Science Vol. 2 (pp. 736-744).
Scopus11989 Connor, R. C. H., Dearie, A., Morrison, R., & Brown, A. L. (1989). An object addressing mechanism for statically typed languages with multiple inheritance. In Conference Proceedings on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, OOPSLA 1989 Vol. 24 (pp. 279-285). ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY.
Scopus2 WoS21988 Morrison, R., Brown, A. L., Carrick, R., Connor, R., & Dearle, A. (1988). On the integration of object-oriented and process-oriented computation in persistent environments. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) Vol. 334 LNCS (pp. 334-339). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Scopus31985 Morrison, R., Dearle, A., Bailey, P. J., Brown, A. L., & Atkinson, M. P. (1985). PERSISTENT STORE AS AN ENABLING TECHNOLOGY FOR INTEGRATED PROJECT SUPPORT ENVIRONMENTS.. In Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 166-172).
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- Object Oriented Programming - Indigenous Course Enrichment Project - SGDE, $2,000, The University of Adelaide, 2016.
- (with Alexander B.)An Integrated Web Based Assignment Submission, Assessment and Feedback System A$40,000, 2008 University Implementation Grants for Learning and Teaching Enhancement, The University of Adelaide, 2008.
- Travel Scholarship c.A$5,000, Apple University Consortium, Apple World Wide Developers Conference Scholarships Program, 2008.
- (with Alexander B., Falkner K., Michalewicz Z. & el-Gindy H.) A Problem Solving Curriculum in Computing us$40,000, Google Research Award Scheme, 2007.
- Real-time PCR Analysis Tools A$10,000, Adelaide Research and Innovation Pty Ltd, 2007.
- Real-time PCR Analysis Tools A$20,000, The University of Adelaide, 2006.
- Travel Scholarship A$6,300, Apple University Consortium, Apple World Wide Developers Conference Scholarships Program, 2004.
- Constructing Suffix Trees Larger than Memory A$9,983, Apple University Consortium, AUDF Development Grant Program, 2003.
- Incremental Garbage Collection for Massive Object Stores A$7,000, University of Adelaide Small Grants Scheme, 2002.
- Partition Selection Policies for Garbage Collection of an OODBMS A$147,000, Sun Microsystems Academic Equipment Grants Scheme, 2001.
- Real-world Software Engineering using Virtual Reality A$47,000, Sun Microsystems Academic Equipment Grants Scheme, 2001.
- Simulation of Massive Object Stores A$6,500, University of Adelaide Small Grants Scheme, 2001.
- Travel Scholarship A$4,000 Apple University Consortium, Apple World Wide Developers Conference Scholarships Program, 2001.
Over the last 30 years the teaching environment and expectations have changed dramatically. Computers are now ubiquitous, extremely capable and universal access to broadband internet is almost a reality. This has lead to significant changes in what we teach, how we teach it and what resources we can expect students to provide for themselves.
As the teaching environment has evolved I have spent a significant amount of time working on useful systems that leverage the innovations to support our teaching and student administration. For example, most assignment work in Computer Science now uses a web based submission system that I wrote, it can automatically assess and mark student work providing instant feedback. To ease the pain of timetabling and resolving the inevitable enrolment issues, I implemented an in browser timetable viewing system that allows solutions to complex scheduling issues to be identified in a just a few clicks.
The combination of my computer systems focussed research interests and the practical experience of building useful systems that have real users and must be maintained, provides a solid foundation to my teaching of computer systems, programming and software engineering.
Recent teaching
Year | Semester 1 | Semester 2 |
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2022 | ● COMP SCI 7081MELB Computer Systems (summer) | |
2021 | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 7081MELA Computer Systems (tri 3) |
2020 | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems |
2019 | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems |
2018 | ● COMP SCI 3303 Engineering Software as Services I ● COMP SCI 4023 / 4123 / 7023 Software Process Improvement |
● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3304 Engineering Software as Services II |
2017 | ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3303 Engineering Software as Services I ● COMP SCI 4023 / 4123 / 7023 Software Process Improvement |
● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3304 Engineering Software as Services II |
2016 | ● COMP SCI 1102 / 1102BR Object Oriented Programming ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3303 Engineering Software as Services I ● COMP SCI 4023 / 4123 / 7023 Software Process Improvement |
● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3304 Engineering Software as Services II |
2015 | ● COMP SCI 1102 / 1102BR Object Oriented Programming ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3303 Engineering Software as Services I ● COMP SCI 4023 / 7023 Software Process Improvement |
● COMP SCI 1102 / 1102BR Object Oriented Programming ● COMP SCI 2000 / 7081 Computer Systems ● COMP SCI 3304 Engineering Software as Services II |
2014 | ● COMP SCI 2202 / 7202 Foundations of Computer Science ● COMP SCI 4023 / 7023 Software Process Improvement |
● COMP SCI 1102 / 1102BR / 1202 / 1202BR Object Oriented Programming ● COMP SCI 3018 Software Engineering Group Project 1B ● COMP SCI 4003B Software Engineering Group Project 2 Part B ● COMP SCI 4011B Software Engineering Honours Project 1B |
2013 | ● COMP SCI 4023 / 7023 Software Process Improvement ● COMP SCI 4054 / 7054 High Integrity Software Engineering |
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Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name 2011 - 2018 Co-Supervisor Personalized Medicine Support System for Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia Patients Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mrs Haneen Reda M Banjar 2006 - 2007 Principal Supervisor Using Sequence Similarity to Predict the Function of Biological Sequences Master of Science in Mathematical and Computer Sciences Master Full Time Mr Craig Jones 1997 - 2012 Principal Supervisor An Active Distributed Storage Architecture Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Dr Craig Patten
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Board Memberships
Date Role Board name Institution name Country 2009 - 2013 Secretary Board of Governers Tyndale Christian School Australia -
Memberships
Date Role Membership Country 2000 - ongoing Member Association for Computing Machinery United States 1983 - ongoing Member British Computer Society United Kingdom -
Offices Held
Date Office Name Institution Country 2001 - 2003 Chapter Vice Chair 2002 / Chair 2003 IEEE Computer Society United States 1999 - 2009 Executive Member Australasian Computer Research and Education Association Australia
Connect With Me
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