Derek Rayside, PEng (he/him)

Derek Rayside is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is cross-appointed to the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He is the Faculty Advisor for Watonomous, the autonomous vehicle student design team in the SAE AutoDrive Challenge. Professor Rayside also taught the inaugural SE Ideas Clinic Activity in the Fall 2018 term.

His research interests include software engineering, lightweight formal methods, visualization, verification, specification, programming languages, static and dynamic program analysis, and software design extraction or reverse engineering. Additionally, Professor Rayside’s interests also include: engineering design – comprised of decision support, design evolution and multi-objective optimization, autonomous vehicles, and blockchain, specifically verification of Smart Contracts.

He has published in venues such as the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), the International Conference on Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM, and Z (ABZ), and the ACM International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts & Experience (GPCE).

• Software engineering
• debugging
• lightweight formal methods
• visualization
• verification
• specification
• programming languages
• static and dynamic program analysis
• software design
• extraction\/reverse engineering
• Engineering Design
• decision support
• design evolution
• multi-objective optimization
• Cybersecurity
• Infrastructure integrity
• autonomous vehicles
• blockchain, specifically verification of Smart Contracts

• 2010, Doctorate Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A
• 2001, Master of Applied Science Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
• 1999, Bachelor of Applied Science Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada

• 2023-present Associate Dean, Co-operative Education and Professional Affairs
• 2020-2023 Software Engineering Director
• 2017-2019 Software Engineering Associate Director

• ACM
• IEEE
• SAE
• PEO

• CS 138 - Introduction to Data Abstraction and Implementation
  • Taught in 2022
• CS 493 - Team Project 1
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2023
• CS 494 - Team Project 2
  • Taught in 2021, 2022, 2024
• ECE 351 - Compilers
  • Taught in 2019
• MTHEL 398 - Mathematics Elective Topics 3
  • Taught in 2024
• SE 463 - Software Requirements Specification and Analysis
  • Taught in 2022
• SE 464 - Software Design and Architectures
  • Taught in 2023
• SE 490 - Design Project 1
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
• SE 491 - Design Project 2
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

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

• Al-Sharman M., Dempster R., Daoud M.A., Nasr M., Rayside D., and Melek W., Self-Learned Autonomous Driving at Unsignalized Intersections: A Hierarchical Reinforced Learning Approach for Feasible Decision, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Canada, 2023.
• Daoud M.A., Mehrez M.W., Rayside D., and Melek W.W., Simultaneous Feasible Local Planning and Path-Following Control for Autonomous Driving, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Volume 23, 16358-16370, United States, 2022.
• Hu C., Hudson S., Ethier M., Al-Sharman M., Rayside D., and Melek W., Sim-to-Real Domain Adaptation for Lane Detection and Classification in Autonomous Driving, IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Proceedings, Volume 127, 457-463, Canada, 2022.
• Dempster R., Al-Sharman M., Jain Y., Li J., Rayside D., and Melek W., DRG: A Dynamic Relation Graph for Unified Prior-Online Environment Modeling in Urban Autonomous Driving, Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 8054-8060, Canada, 2022.
• Eray E., Haas C.T., and Rayside D., Interface Health and Workload between Stakeholders in Complex Capital Projects: Assessment, Visualization, and Interpretation Us, Journal of Management in Engineering, Volume 37, Canada, 2021.
• Al-Sharman M., Murdoch D., Cao D., Lv C., Zweiri Y., Rayside D., and Melek W., A sensorless state estimation for a safety-oriented cyber-physical system in urban driving: Deep learning approach, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, Volume 8, 169-178, Canada, 2021.
• Eray E., Haas C., and Rayside D., A model for measuring interface health between project stakeholders in complex construction projects, Proceedings, Annual Conference - Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, Volume 127, Canada, 2019.
• Golzarpoor B., Haas C.T., Rayside D., Kang S., and Weston M., Improving construction industry process interoperability with Industry Foundation Processes (IFP), Advanced Engineering Informatics, Volume 38, 555-568, Canada, 2018.
• Eray E., Haas C.T., Rayside D., and Golparvar-Fard M., A conceptual framework for tracking design completeness of Track Line discipline in MRT projects, ISARC 2018 - 35th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction and International AEC/FM Hackathon: The Future of Building Things, Canada, 2018.
• Lutellier T., Chollak D., Garcia J., Tan L., Rayside D., Medvidovic N., and Kroeger R., Measuring the Impact of Code Dependencies on Software Architecture Recovery Techniques, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Volume 44, 159-181, Canada, 2018.