Hello, I am Badger Dowdeswell (a.k.a Barry), I am currently a teacher and researcher at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), in Auckland, New Zealand. My PhD journey started on April 3rd, 2017 when I was accepted into the postgraduate program of the AUT Software Engineering Research Laboratory (SERL). I finished my doctoral studies in late 2021 and I now teach and mentor both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the university. You can read more about my work at AUT here.
My interest is in the design and development of cyber-physical computer systems. These are the tiny (and not so tiny) embedded computers that control aircraft, automobiles, power stations and the myriad of devices we call the Internet Of Things (IoT). The research focus for my team is the management of large, complex requirements sets, looking at techniques for requirements traceability and diagnostics. During my Master’s research here, my supervisor Dr Roopak Sinha and I developed a framework called TORUS (Traceability of Requirements Using Splices) that we are building on still. I love this stuff.
Outside of AUT, I am the Director of Research at The Rockweather Collaboration, where I encourage and sometimes cause trouble for a group of like-minded developers and teachers who share resources and projects that inspire them. Our work in schools and universities, building and fostering science education programs is endlessly exciting and gives us so much encouragement. From bottle rockets in primary schools to helping to support fashion school graduates, we are able to see into an emerging world of innovation that often takes our breath away, makes us cry regularly, and yet more often than not lets our collaborators fly…
Never doubt the value of simply being there and getting involved; we continually surprise ourselves and find ourselves whispering “I love this stuff…”
The Rockweather Collaboration 