hide random home screenshot http://www.charm.net/~web/Alan/Richmond.html (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)

Alan Richmond

Principal Systems Engineer and Group Leader at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He pioneered the presentation of astrophysics satellite data on the World-Wide Web (WWW), through the StarTrax interface - a forms-based search tool for astronomy catalogs (a nominee in the The Best of the Web '94). He is administrator for the The WWW Virtual Library section on WWW Development. He has presented tutorials on advanced web topics at the Third International World-Wide Web Conference, and DCI's WebWorlds.

He also has created:
RPS, A Remote Proposal Submission System for NASA Missions;
StarChild, A NASA - K12 Proposal Demonstration;
WebStars, A Directory of Resources for Astronomers;
Ask Dr.Web, A Help Desk for web developers, supported by some 15 world-wide partners;
WebCalc (old), WebCalc (new), A Pocket Calculator Demonstration;
Harnessing the Power of the Web, Tutorials on HTML, Tables, Forms, HTTP, CGI, and authoring style;
The Web Developer's Virtual Library, A Directory of Resources for WWW Developers.

He has built software for several international scientific research projects, e.g. the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF); the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST); and the Joint European Torus (JET). He has over 16 years software development experience, has been a member of several major computer societies, is a member of the Internet Society, and has published several papers on software development.

Education & Professional Awards

Fields of Specialization

Employment History

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, MD, USA.

Dates
3.93 - present.
Position
Principal Systems Engineer and Group Leader for Hughes STX at the HEASARC.
Duties
As group leader: provide supervision & guidance for the group; monitor the technical performance of staff in the group; review deliverables & enforce applicable standards & procedures; provide presentation of the group's activity in the monthly review meetings; perform annual reviews & recommend salary actions.
My major task is provision of a multiplatform graphical user interface for access to astrophysics satellite observation catalogs & data products. This was initially implemented on XVT, but switched to WWW since soon after the first public release of NCSA's Mosaic for X. Founded & led Space Science Web Group. Presented work on XVT & WWW at the ADASS conference. Made a number of presentations about the WWW at GSFC. Installed & experimented with several WWW, WAIS, & Gopher servers.

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Grenoble, France.
Dates :
11.90 - 3.93
Position
Software Engineer; Head of Data Acquisition Group.
Duties
Liaised with experimentalists and technicians; allocated and monitored tasks of 4 software engineers. Implemented software and documentation standards; developed documentation utilities [Yacc/lex/awk] and a standard ESRF style [FrameMaker, LaTeX]. Founded Software Practices Group and led the development of General Programming Standards. Wrote Software Development Manual. Introduced SPR (Software Problem Reporting) system. Developed MXaf application framework to support GUI development [C, BX/Motif], and SPR tool [C++, Motif/X, TCP/IP, dbm, Oracle, and e-mail]. Developed GUIs for beamline, attenuator, and slit control [BX/Motif]. Rewrote Proteus user interface toolkit [C++, Motif/X], to facilitate porting classical applications to X-windows on UNIX workstations.

NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany; Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Dates
7.85 - 5.90.
Position
Senior Software Systems Engineer.
Duties
Developed user interfaces at front and back ends for HST scientific operations, on VMS and UNIX [C, OMNIBASE SMARTSTAR (SQL) on a Britton Lee IDM 500]. Enhanced the Proposal Entry Processor software (PEP), e.g. addition of Solar System Target List [Yacc]. This system is the astronomer's primary interface for specifying proposed observations and ensuring that the proposals are syntactically correct and apparently feasible. Wrote HST Resource Usage Tool [Yacc]. Designed and developed STARCAT to allow astronomers to browse the the ESO/ST-ECF Archive, e.g. catalogue of HST observations, and to request images archived on optical discs. It presents forms enabling the user to enter constraints on the search process [SQL]. Developed a user interface toolkit, Proteus [C, curses, LaTeX], to support STARCAT and other applications worldwide. Led ESO working group on software standards, and the European Space Information System (ESIS) working group on User Interface Requirements. Attended US National Conference on Software Reusability.

Joint European Torus (JET), Culham, England, and Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, Germany.

8.79 - 6.86. Freelance Consultant. Generated requirements (by consultation with the physicists and technicians), designed and developed user interfaces and control and data acquisition software for plasma diagnostics; installed and commissioned at JET. Designed and developed real-time and interactive components of the control and data acquisition data base system (TRASYS) [FORTRAN on Norsk Data 100's with SINTRAN III]. The major components of this work were user interfacing, and database construction for CODAS (JET's Control and Data Acquisition System).

Tractionel Engineering (TRASYS), Brussels, Belgium.

4.78 - 7.79. Consultant Programmer. Extended display management, database, and monitoring systems for Doel 3 nuclear power stations [FORTRAN on Gould SEL with RTM OS]. Employed by TRASYS at JET, Culham.

Wimpey Laboratories Hayes, Middlesex, UK.

9.75 - 3. 78. Scientific Analyst. Supported users, specified requirements, designed, documented and programmed civil engineering applications. Constructed scientific laboratory database systems, e.g. off-line storage of test results for graphics plot [FORTRAN on PDP 11's with RSX/11M OS, and on ICL 1900's with GEORGE 3 OS].

Selected Publications

Richmond, A., et al. 1994,
Implementation of an Astrophysics Information System on the World-Wide Web , presented at The Second International WWW Conference '94: Mosaic and the Web.

Richmond, A., et al., 1994,
Design of a Remote Proposal Submission System , demonstrated at the Fourth Annual Conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems.

Richmond, A., White, N., 1994,
The Design and Architecture of an Astrophysics Information System , published in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society.

Richmond, A., 1994,
Towards an Astrophysical Cyberspace: The Evolution of User Interfaces, published in the proceedings of The Third Annual Conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems .

Richmond, A., et al. 1994,
StarTrax -- The Next Generation User Interface, published in the proceedings of The Third Annual Conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems .

Pasian, F., Richmond, A.
User Interfaces in Astronomy, in Data Handling and Analysis in Astronomy, ed. D. Egret, M. Albrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, June, 1991.

Richmond, A., McGlynn, T., Ochsenbein, F., Romelfanger, F., Russo, G.
The Design of A Large Astronomical Database System, in Astronomy from Large Databases - Scientific Objectives and Methodological Approaches, ST-ECF/ESO, Garching, Munich, FRG, October, 1987.

Richmond A.
Software Design by Object-oriented Functional Layering, Computer Physics Communications, 41, North-Holland Amsterdam, 1986.