Professor Emeritus: INRS-Telecommunications, Univ. of Quebec
In previous incarnations I have been
Visiting Erskine Fellow, Dept. of Computer
Science, University of Canterbury, Christchurch,
New Zealand (July/Dec 2001)
Professor, INRS-Telecommunications, Univ. of Quebec, Montreal
(1983/2001)
Senior Manager, Bell Northern Research, Montreal, (1978/1983)
Research Scholar, IIASA (International Institute of Applied
Systems Analysis), Laxenburg, Austria (1977/1978)
Research Associate and Project Manager of the ALOHA Network,
Univ. of Hawaii (1974/1977)
Professor, McGill University, Electrical Engineering (1968/1976)
The Bicycle Journals
I first started long distance touring in 1985 with a ride from
Strasbourg to Paris. I had just presented a paper at a conference in
Strasbourg, and wanted to see things differently on the way home. This, like
almost all my trips before I retired in 2001, was an attempt to make
business travel more interesting. In 1990, I started to keep a journal on
a small Atari Portfolio computer. I have since graduated to a larger
laptop and also started to carry a camera. This is the link to my
journals.. I lived in Hawaii for several years and came back four times to ride on the islands. All those journals are also in the Hawaii journals. In 2002, I was fortunate to be able to live in Switzerland for a while. There I had several bicycle trips and went skiing in places that were only a part of my imagination. This is the link to that adventure.
Rev. Henry Stewart Ferguson in China
From 1895 to 1932, my grandfather, Rev. Henry Stewart Ferguson was a
missionary in China. For most of those 37 years, he was based in
Cheng Yang Kwan in Anhui province. He was eventually executed by
Mao's bandits, before they became the Red Army. In 1968,
when I was going around the world, I wanted to visit, but that was in
the midst of the Cultural Revolution.
In May 2001, I visited
China and rode my bicycle to Cheng Yang Kwan, even though its name
had been changed to Zheng Yuan. My guide, and historical
perspective were the letters that grandfather wrote to his mother,
Agnes, and sister Alice. I have collected them in
Letters Home: Rev. Henry Stewart Ferguson, and family
in China.
The details of my adventure in China are in China, 2001 -Shanghai, Nanjing, Cheng Yang Kwan, ... , May 7 to May 30, 2001
Professional Activities
My research interests were centred around the specification and
validation of telecommunication protocols. My last major project was the
prototype of a system to be used during the standardisation process to
create a validation model of the standard in Promela, and to closely
relate that model to the written version of the standard. The system
uses ideas based on Knuth's Literate Programming, and creates
hyperlinks from the model document to the actual written version of the
standard. TDMA-RLP (IS 707-2) is the test system for the prototype. This
system is geared to online viewing and this
seminar and paper
describes the experiences and problems of creating such a
system.
I also have taught an intensive short course in Protocol
Specification, Verification, and Design for a telecomunications
supplier. This is a link to that course
On April 15, 2003 at the Universidad de Chile in
Santiago Chile, and again on July 15, at Gunma
University in Japan, I gave a seminar on The
Telephone, The Internet, and the New
Telecommunications Infrastructure,
which is very biased history of
telecommunications, and a prognosis for a future
network architecture.
My current CV (March 2007) is available
here.Mottos for the modern world:
