Paul Ward

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

• ECE 108 - Discrete Math and Logic 1
  • Taught in 2018
• ECE 150 - Fundamentals of Programming
  • Taught in 2017, 2018
• ECE 356 - Database Systems
  • Taught in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021
• ECE 654 - Software Reliability Engineer
  • Taught in 2020
• ECE 656 - Database Systems
  • Taught in 2017, 2019, 2020

• 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
• 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

• Currently considering applications from graduate students. A completed online application is required for admission; start the application process now.