Paul Ward, PEng

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.

• 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

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

• ECE 356 - Database Systems
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023
• ECE 654 - Software Reliability Engineering
  • Taught in 2020
• ECE 656 - Database Systems
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024
• SE 101 - Introduction to Methods of Software Engineering
  • Taught in 2023

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

• 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, 1, 2016
• Ward, Paul, Inside the Mind’s Eye of an Expert Athlete, , , 2016
• 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