Amnon H. Eden, PhD: Bio

Below appears an abridged summary of my academic and professional biography. Please contact me for further details.

I am a computer scientist, an asst. professor (UK: lecturer) with the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex (Colchester, UK), a research fellow with the Center For Inquiry (Amherst, New York), and the associate editor of Minds and Machines. In the past I have worked in the high-tech industry as a programmer and software designer, chaired the software engineering diploma programme in Tel Aviv College of Management, and held visiting and fixed-term academic positions in Tel Aviv University, Israel Institute of Technology—Technion, Uppsala University, and Concordia University.

I received a PhD for my research in software design from the Department of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University in 2001, and an MSc (Cum Laude) for my research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science in 1994. My [under-]graduate education in computer science, cognitive science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy was conducted with Yehuda Elkana's Interdisciplinary Programme for Fostering Excellence (subsequently renamed "Adi Lautman") in Tel Aviv University.

My research interests span a range of subjects in software design, artificial intelligence, object-oriented programming, software modelling, software engineering, the future of computing and technological forecasting, the philosophy of computer science, and the philosophy of mind. My research is [was] funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), European Science Foundation (ESF), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Eshkol Fund, among others.

My contributions include LePUS, the Intension/Locality hypothesis, the paradigms of computer science, metrics for measuring software flexibility, and the ontology of computer programs. My work on LePUS3: a visual, formal, object-oriented Design Description Language based on the observed building-blocks of object-oriented design and defined in the first-order predicate logic, has been used as a basis for several spin-off specification languages and tools, including out own Two-Tier Programming Toolkit (list of publications).

Currently I am writing a book on object-oriented modelling, organising a track in ECAP 2009 and a special issue on the philosophy of computer science, and together with my research students, researching the subject of tool support in software design.

While working as a programmer and software designer I specialized in object-oriented programming and the C++ programming language. During my professional life I have also enjoyed programming in object-oriented (Smalltalk, Eiffel, Java), logic (PROLOG), functional (Scheme, Lisp), imperative (C, Pascal, Basic, COBOL, Fortran), modular (Ada) and machine (various architectures) programming languages.

I live with my partner and son in Layer de la Haye near Colchester in Essex, United Kingdom.