Damian Conway

Biographical Information

How did I end up teaching Computer Science?

In 1983, never having used a computer before, I enrolled in a BSc/BE double degree, majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I perservered with Engineering until they tried to make me learn Thermodynamics, at which point I swapped to a straight Science degree. In 1986 I completed my Honours degree in Computer Science.

From there I went immediately into a PhD, looking at methods of drawing 3D shapes on computers without special purpose hardware. I submitted the thesis in January 1993.

In the meantime (in 1990) I ran out of money and needed a full-time job. I had been a demonstrator since 1986 and enjoyed the teaching, so I applied for a job as a lecturer. I started work in February 1991.

Have I spent all my life in universities?

No, along the way I've also had jobs as a programmer, a user-support consultant, a research scientist (with Telstra), and an instructor for Outward Bound.

What do I do at Monash?

Presently I teach the following courses:

CSC428: Advanced Object-oriented Techniques in C++ (Honours)
GCO4020: Advanced Object-oriented Techniques in C++ (Honours, Distance Education)
CSC2050: Object-oriented Software Engineering (Second Year)

I have a Third Year project group, several Honours project students, and eight postgraduates, who are working on projects as diverse as:

Programming language design
Artificial life
Modelling of plant cells
Computational physics
Generating artificial narrations of text

I also conduct my own research and write papers in the following areas:

Graphical and non-graphical user interfaces
Programming language design
Declarative and automatic user interface generation
Gesture recognition

The rest of my time is taken up running the Bachelor of Computer Science degree.

Trivia

Favourite food: pasta

Favourite cuisine: Vietnamese

Favourite (recent) film: The Fifth Element (1997)

Favourite (ancient) film: Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Favourite authors: Terry Pratchett, Harry Harrison, Steve Perry, David Brin, Harry Turtledove.

Favourite comedians: Lenny Henry, Rowan Atkinson (as Blackadder, not Mr Bean)

Favourite musicians: Jean Michel Jarre, J. J. Cale, Kashtin

Favorite sports: lifting, volleyball (co-rec), cricket (spectator)

Favourite programming languages: C++, C, Eiffel, GRAIL, Haskell, HyperTalk, Icon, Orthogonal, Perl, PostScript, Self.

Damian Conway / damian@bruce.csse.monash.edu.au