Gregor Kiczales is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

. He is currently a full time

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, British Columbia, Canada. He is best known for developing the concept of

aspect-oriented programming In computing, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns. It does so by adding behavior to existing code (an advice) ''without'' modifying t ...

, and the

AspectJ AspectJ is an aspect-oriented programming (AOP) extension created at PARC for the Java programming language. It is available in Eclipse Foundation open-source projects, both stand-alone and integrated into Eclipse. AspectJ has become a widely us ...

extension to the

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

programming language, both of which he designed while working at

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

. He is also one of the co-authors of the

specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...

for the

Common Lisp Object System The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) is the facility for object-oriented programming which is part of ANSI Common Lisp. CLOS is a powerful dynamic object system which differs radically from the OOP facilities found in more static languages such as ...

, and is the author of the book ''

The Art of the Metaobject Protocol ''The Art of the Metaobject Protocol'' (AMOP) is a 1991 book by Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, and Daniel G. Bobrow (all three working for Xerox PARC) on the subject of metaobject protocol. Overview The book contains an explanation of what ...

'', along with Jim Des Rivières and

Daniel G. Bobrow Daniel Gureasko Bobrow (29 November 1935 – 20 March 2017) was an American computer scientist who created an oft-cited artificial intelligence program STUDENT (computer program), STUDENT, with which he earned his PhD., worked at BBN Technologies ( ...

. Most of Kiczales' work throughout the years has been focused on allowing

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

s to create programs that look as much as possible like their design, to reduce complexity and make code maintenance easier, ultimately improving software quality.

Career

After pursuing undergraduate studies at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, Kiczales started his research career in 1980 at the MIT Lab for Computer Science, where he stayed until 1983. In 1984, he joined the

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from Sta ...

software research lab as Member of Research Staff, becoming Principal Scientist in 1996. Throughout his time at PARC, Kiczales developed some of his most important research works, including

and

. He left PARC in 1999 to focus on computer science education. In 2000, he moved to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and joined the Department of Computer Science at the

as a tenured professor. At UBC, Kiczales started the Software Practices Lab and designed a number of courses related to software engineering and programming languages. Most importantly, he designed CPSC 110, the introductory programming course in the UBC curriculum, which students take in their first year of undergraduate studies. The course focuses on systematic program design by means of '' design recipes''. In 2002, he co-founded Intentional Software with

Charles Simonyi Charles Simonyi (; hu, Simonyi Károly, ; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-American software architect. He started and led Microsoft's applications group, where he built the first versions of Microsoft Office. He co-founded and led In ...

, but then left the company in 2003 in order to return to

UBC The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top three ...

. In 2012, he won the Senior AITO Dahl-Nygaard Prize for his work on the

, and was named an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

for his contributions to aspect-oriented programming. In July 2017, he was appointed executive director of UBC Extended Learning.

References

External links

Gregor Kiczales' homepageedX courses by Gregor Kiczales
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kiczales, Gregor Living people 1961 births American computer scientists Canadian computer scientists Programming language researchers University of British Columbia faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Scientists at PARC (company)

Career

See also

References

External links