I was born in 1960 in Enschede. After completing the Gymnasium at the Ichthus College I obtained my BSc degree in computer science (in 1982) from the HIO in Enschede. During my studies I did projects at the "Mathematisch Centrum" (now CWI) and at the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics. After carrying out my military service (1982/1983), I started working at the Hoger Informatica Onderwijs (HIO) in Enschede as a teacher/researcher focusing on UNIX networking and distributed systems (the MANUS project).
In 1987 I joined the Software Engineering Research Centre (SERC) right when it was founded. As technical coordinator I was responsible for setting up and managing SERC's infrastructure and participating in research. Later on I became a project manager and organized, managed and participated in several of SERC's research projects (like Camera, Odds and Musa). I was also actively involved in establishing SERC's research program and mission.
Since 1992 SERC operates without government funding, obtaining its income purely from consultancy assignments and contract research projects for industry and government. As a principal advisor I have managed and contributed to all kinds of projects for various customers and involving a broad range of topics, such as introduction of object-oriented development, OO training, -workshops and -pilots, studies of architectural issues of distributed systems, state-of-the-art surveys, initiating software quality programs, architecture definitions and reviews, workflow management pilots and advanced prototype development. See the SERC pages for more information about products and services.
Early in 2003, SERC became a daughter company of CIBIT Consultants|Educators. I was appointed managing consultant of the SERC group.
From 1992 until 1998 I was (in addition to working at SERC) an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Utrecht University. I worked within Doaitse Swierstra's Software Technology Group and was contact person for the specialisation on Software Architecture. I have given courses on Software Architecture, CSCW and Groupware, Software Engineering Environments and Applied Information Technology. In addition, I guided lots of student projects and was chairman of the infrastructure committee of the department (APC). I still cooperate with the department; for example in the Trace project.
Over the years I have done research work on a lot of topics. In the Ariadne project I did work on office systems, workflow and (generic) groupware. Earlier, at SERC, I worked on OO databases, distributed version and configuration management and groupware. In addition, I've worked on design patterns, objects, functional languages, reengineering and distributed systems. More recently I've done work on design reviews, software logistics and software architecture. In 2003 I published a book on software architecture (in Dutch) together with colleagues.
I am (somewhat) involved in the European OO community. I was organizing chair of ECOOP'92, which took place in Utrecht in june/july 1992 (See the ECOOP Home Page). I am a member of the Association Internationale Technologie d'Objets (AITO) which governs the ECOOP conferences. I'm also a member of the programme committee of the Dutch Jacquard programme on Software Engineering.
I have published two books and quite some papers. A list of them can be found here. I also frequently give talks on different topics.
Off work, I try to spend as much time as possible with my family. I am married to Monique, and we have three children: Jasper, Evelien and Maarten. Among my hobbies are playing the guitar (classical, electric, 12-string), reading books (mostly English/American fiction), cooking, playing (nintendo) games and watching television. I'm also interested in sports (among which is test cricket). Also, I'm interested in languages (human, that is). Some links to pages about my hobbies can be found on my home page.
Last modified: 11/12/03