John R. Ellis personal background
Member of the Adjunct Faculty Computer Science Program
Florida Institute of Technology
150 West University Boulevard
Melbourne, Florida 32901-6988

e-mail: john@retisoft.com or johnrellis@earthlink.net
WWW: http://cs.fit.edu/~ellis


Professional Interests:

Software Engineering:

Systems Engineering:


Classes

Current Semester:

Previously Taught:


Pastimes:


Personal History

Professional Experience

December 1997 - Present
President, retiSoft, inc.
Presently responsible for operations and engineering activities of a small enterprise specializing in the development of embedded, real-time computer systems. Current projects include embedded, networked microcontroller systems in the telecommunications and health & fitness industries.

April 1995 - March 1999
Vice President, Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Exigent International, Inc.
Responsibilities included a number of management and engineering roles, including Product Manager for Pluto, a new product for building custom satellite simulators; Product Manager for OS/COMET®, a commercial product on which satellite ground stations can be built; and chairman of the Exigent Corporate Software Engineering Process Group (CSEPG). Also worked with System Design of the Satellite Control software component of the IRIDIUM® Personal Communications System.

February 1978 - March 1995
Senior Systems Engineer, Harris Corporation, Electronic Systems Sector, Government Aerospace Systems Division
Various technical and management positions on a variety of commercial and military embedded real-time software systems and Internal Research and Development projects. Notable systems include a DoD sponsored nuclear event detection system, a telephone multi-service system, networked newspaper editorial composition systems, the Integrated Multiplex System for the Agusta A-129 Mangusta helicopter, a digital map display system for the Japanese C-1 Kai transport aircraft, two separate fiber optic High Speed Data Bus controllers for the Navy A-12, and Systems Engineer for Software on the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program. In addition to engineering responsibilities, served on the Software Engineering Process Group and the Systems Engineering Curriculum Committee.

March 1975 - May 1978
Space Shuttle Launch Operations Engineer, 6555th Aerospace Test Group, USAF
Member of the Air Force resident office at the Kennedy Space Center during development of the Space Shuttle systems; with responsibility for liaison with NASA for the transfer of Launch Processing System technology to the Air Force Shuttle facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.

June 1969 - March 1975
Headquarters Air Force Mathematician/Systems Analyst, Air Force Technical Applications Center, USAF
Responsible for the development of prototypes for several embedded real-time data collection and processing systems for the DoD monitoring of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Personally developed the software for all systems; managed the hardware development.

Teaching Experience

June 1995 - February 1999
Software Technology, Inc. & Exigent International, Inc.
Personally developed courses entitled: "Work Package Leader Training", "Introduction to C++ Programming and Object-Oriented Design", "Introduction to Software Engineering", "HTML: Enough to Build Effective Web Documents", "Object-Oriented Programming". Responsible for managing developer training activities on the IRIDIUM® program. for managing the development of the operator training courses on the IRIDIUM® program.

September 1991 - Present
Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida
Teaching graduate level courses: Introduction to Software Engineering, Advanced Software Engineering, Special Topics in Software Engineering, and Software Project Management.

June 1990 - March 1995
Harris Corporation, Government Systems Sector
Personally developed courses entitled "Object-Oriented Software Development" and "Real-Time Object-Oriented Structured Analysis". Also presented short tutorials on various technical topics, especially associated with Ada, Ada run-time systems, Ada Chapter 13 capabilities, real-time kernels, development methodologies, etc.

September 1971 - January 1972
University of Virginia, Extension Center, Ft. Belvoir, VA
Undergraduate course: Introduction to Computers. Also substitute for college algebra course.

Education

1968 - 1969
New Mexico State University , Las Cruces, NM.
Graduated with M.S. in Computer Science.

1963 - 1967
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee , Milwaukee, WI.
Graduated with B.S. in Mathematics.

Patents

October 26, 1998 (filing date)
Satellite Simulator (Pat. Pending).

April 24, 1984
Method of Controlling Message Transmission Sequence in Multi-Station Communications System (Pat. No. 4445214).

June 1, 1982
Multiple Services System Using Telephone Local Loop (Pat. No. 4332980).

Awards and Honors

April, 1992
Harris GASD Eagle Award for Excellence in the Area of Continuous Improvement, for establishing and offering object-oriented training across several Electronic Systems Sector divisions.

August, 1991
Harris GASD Achievement Award for excellent performance in Support of GASD's Visions and Goals.

December, 1987
Harris GASD Engineering Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution from concept through transition to manufacturing of the A-129 project.

Significant Publications

1994
Objectifying Real-Time Systems, SIGS Books, New York.

October, 1989
"A Periodic Ada Control Kernel (PACK)," Tri-Ada '89 Proceedings.

May, 1988
"Controlling Large Cyclic Avionics Software Systems Written In Ada," NAECON '88 Proceedings (Co-author: Steven A. Von Edwins).

May 1985
"A New Approach to Ensuring Deterministic Processing in an Integrated Avionics Software System," NAECON '85 Proceedings.

Professional Society Memberships



Want to get a hold of me? e-mail: johnrellis@earthlink.net