Mentor Introduction: Philip Johnson

As a UH ICS faculty member, I am delighted to see this group and participation in it by both former UH students like Aaron Kagawa as well as community members like Dan Leuck. I hope it can develop into a powerful and positive force for the ICS community in particular and the Hawaii tech community in general.

To help push things forward and foster community development, I would like to know how people see themselves as mentors and what their goals are for the future. To kick this off, I will provide my own perspective and hope that others follow suit with their own "Mentor Introduction" posting. (End preamble!)

I have been a UH Professor in the Information and Computer Sciences Department since 1990, and my primary research and educational focus is software engineering. In addition to my departmental activities, I have also been active in the Hawaii tech community: I served on the Board of Directors of the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation (HSDC), the High Technology Development Corporation (HTDC), and LavaNet, Inc. I also helped found an Internet startup called hotU in the late 1990's. I taught interdisciplinary courses in software development and entrepreneurship with participants from ICS and the UH School of Business in the early 2000s. I have a deep and longstanding commitment to the Hawaii technology community and see the ICS Department's faculty and students as a significant source of "nutrition" for the local tech economy.

My mentorship activities focus on (a) software research and (b) software development. To support mentoring students in software research, I founded the Collaborative Software Development Laboratory (CSDL) in 1991. CSDL has had over 60 student members so far (many of which can be seen on the Members page), with about 4-6 active student members at any one time. Most student research involves topics in software engineering, although I have also mentored students in research involving dolphin whistle recognition using neural networks, hardware co-processor design, and sustainability. Regardless of the topic, my mentoring in CSDL focuses on development of scientific research skills, which I believe has a direct and positive application to the high tech marketplace.

My second mentor focus is software development, which I have pursued for a number of years through my undergraduate (ICS 413/414) and graduate (ICS 613) courses in software engineering. In contrast to CSDL, I have been able to mentor hundreds of students through these courses. To get a taste for the class, you can see the ICS 413 website for Fall, 2008 here. I have worked hard in these classes over the years to keep them current with respect to both theory and practice. In recent years, I have also incorporated elements focused directly on helping students transition into the professional community. For example, all students must now maintain an engineering log and develop a professional portfolio (see this page for links), and this semester I am requiring them all to join TechHui and its uh-ics-students group.

For many years, I have been working with various people in the community to help "pipeline" students from academia into the local high tech industry. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but I am always excited by new opportunities to help our students discover their talents, passions, and organizations that will encourage them to fulfill their potential. I believe this group can be part of that process and I look forward to learning more about each of you and how we can best work together.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this very long posting!

Philip