Paul Ward

Associate Professor
Paul Ward

Contact information

Phone: 519-888-4567 x33127
Location: DC 2539

Biography summary

Paul Ward is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He is also a faculty fellow at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies.

Professor Ward’s expertise lies in the area of distributed systems and computer networks. In distributed computing, his work focuses on distributed-application management, and more generally on dependable and self-managing distributed systems, with a recent focus on fault detection and diagnosis in Web Services. Professor Ward’s work in networks focuses on raising the abstraction level of the network from one of packet delivery to a service-oriented network, specifically concentrating on problems of service discovery, and the problem of semantic coupling, both of functional and non-functional attributes. He has also studied problems of capacity and fairness in wireless mesh networks and routing in delay-tolerant networks.

Professor Ward co-holds two patents; ‘Brokering Web Mobile Services’ which provides a novel mobile web services discovery method that is capable of fulfilling the requirements from both the clients and providers. His second patent is a ‘Method for Solving Application Failures using Social Collaboration’ in which a computer-implemented method, system and computer usable program code for solving an application failure using social collaboration are provided.

Research interests

  • Distributed systems management
  • Dependable distributed systems
  • Autonomic computing
  • Peer-to-peer computing
  • Wireless mesh
  • Mobile ad hoc networks
  • Communication Systems
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Engineering
  • Software Engineering
  • Connectivity and Internet of Things
  • IoT
  • Devices
  • Application Domains
  • Communications and Access
  • Networking and Data
  • Dependability and security

Education

  • 2002, Doctorate, PhD, University of Waterloo
  • 1998, Bachelor's, BScE, University of New Brunswick
  • 1993, Master's, MASc, University of Waterloo

Courses*

  • ECE 356 - Database Systems
    • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021
  • ECE 654 - Software Reliability Engineering
    • Taught in 2020
  • ECE 656 - Database Systems
    • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

Selected/recent publications

  • Rudafshani, Masoomeh and Ward, Paul AS, LeakSpot: detection and diagnosis of memory leaks in JavaScript applications, Software: Practice and Experience, 2016
  • Oyvind, Josok and Knox, Benjamin J and Helkala, Kirsi and Lugo, Ricardo G and Sutterlin, Stefan and Ward, Paul, Exploring the Hybrid Space Theoretical Framework Applying Cognitive Science in Military Cyberspace Operations, , 2016
  • Hutton, R and Ward, Paul, Pros and Cons of Adaptive Expertise, , 2016
  • Diekfuss, Jed A and Ward, Paul and Raisbeck, Louisa D, Attention, workload, and performance: A dual-task simulated shooting study, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2016, 1 - 15
  • Ward, Paul, Inside the Mind’s Eye of an Expert Athlete, , 2016

Graduate studies