Executive Statement

I am currently employed as an Associate Professor and have a range of teaching, research and leadership duties in the area of Creative Technologies at Colab, including a current appointment as Head of Academic Programmes and Programme Leader of the Master of Creative Technologies programme. I am actively engaged in curriculum development at both course and programme level that involves integrating disciplinary knowledge and practices into a trandisciplinary student experience. I have receieved excellent feedback from students as to the quality of learning opportunities provided at all levels and have been accredited as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy having demonstrated sustained leadership in terms of teaching. Research activities include the supervision of postgraduate students and the building of a cohesive transdiscplinary research team. Publications have been made through local and international conferences, as well as in resepected Journals.

Current Employment

11/2016 - Associate Professor & Head of Academic Programmes, Colab, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand.

Colab is an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit that bridges the three Schools of Art & Design, Communication Studies, and Engineering, Computing & Mathematical Sciences in the Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies. The role involves the conduct of research, teaching on both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, supervising thesis students and contributing to the strategic leadership of Colab through oversight of all the academic programmes

Achievements

• Successfully supervised postgraduate students to completion.
• Redesigned the curriculum for improving the delivery of the Bachelor of Creative Technologies degree as a research-led undergraduate programme.
• Developed content for both new and existing papers and as a result enhanced quality of learning for AUT students and improved progression rates without sacrificing quality.
• Consistently achived both student and peer recognition for teaching excellence.
• Developed industry relationships leading to research and student learning opportunities.

Responsibilities

• Leadership
• Enhance the research culture through the ongoing development of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes
• Assisting staff in the development of personal research plans with targeted research outputs balanced against appropriate teaching aspirations
• Mentor staff to improve their teaching and research capabilties, also including mentoring of staff through developing research portfolios and preparation for PBRF
• Teaching
• Develop, implement and monitor bleeding edge, research-led curricula
• Teaching on a range of taught undergraduate papers in the Creative Technologies programmes, in addition to driving change in teaching culture across the Faculty through involvement in delivering other programmes in Engineering, Computer Science and Art & Design
• Mentoring student teams in Studio based projects on a wide range of projects, including topics such as responding to global challenges, app development, projection mapping, game studies, transmedia, sustainability, additive manufacturing and design
• Supervise postgraduate students on Masters and Doctoral programmes
• Service
• Managing doctoral student progression and growing doctoral student enrollments
• Maintaining academic quality through service on Faculty and University committees

Employment History

02/2012 – 10/2016 Senior Lecturer, Colab, Auckland University of Technology, NZ

An appointment in Creative Technologies strengthed the technical capabilities in a progressive teaching programme that combined elements of art, computing, design and engineering as a means to produce graduates capable of integrating knowledge across disciplines. Appointment as Programme Leader for the Bachelor of Creative Technologies degree (2012-2013) provided an opportunity to redesign the curriculum and improve the dlievery of the programme, which resulted in improvement in student satisfaction. Similarly an appointment as Leader of Doctoral Studies (2016) helped grow the PhD and MPhil programmes and change the research culture within Colab, which led to both promotion to Associate Professor and appointment as Head of Academic Programmes with the remit to lead the strategic development of new and existing programmes.

09/2006 – 01/2012 Senior Lecturer & Associate Director SERL, Auckland University of Technology, NZ

This role involved posgraduate supervision and significant teaching duties on both undergraduate and taught postgraduate degreees. During this period a number of nominations for teaching quality awards were recevied, including the AuSM "Awesome" awards in 2009 and the Vice-Chancellors Teaching Excellence Award in 2010. Consistently high student feedback, recognition for teaching quality and excellence in postgraduate supervision led to promotion to Senior Lecturer (Above the Bar) in 2011. Teaching duties were on a range of Computer Science papers, including Computing Technology in Society, Data & Process Modelling, Software Engineering, Search Based Software Engineeing, Research Methods, Contemporary Issues in ICT and Software Requirements Engineering. In addition to teaching and research, this role involved service activities on School and Faculty Exam Boards, Boards of Studies and Research Committees as well as acting as Associate Director of the Software Engineering Research Lab.

09/2003 – 08/2006 Senior Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology, NZ

This role involved conducting personal research as well as acting as Deputy Director of SERL. A key achievement was the implementation of a new structure for the lab which changed the emphasis from short term consultancy to long term research projects. This led to an increase in the number and quality of research outputs. Funding was secured for research projects through grant applications and a number of postgraduate students were recruited and supervised to completion. The role also involved teaching on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate papers, which was extended to a full teaching load and promotion to Senior Lecturer in 2006.

08/2002 – 08/2003 Senior Consultant, INBIS Group, UK

The promotion to Senior Consultant involved taking on further Business Development activities and significant direct exposure to INBIS clients. Of particular note was a period of time spent working with Thales Naval Ltd on managing requirements and developing business process models for the future aircraft carrier (CVF) project. These models were successfully used to capture the project lifecycle and corresponding development processes and ensured that the evolving product design met the changing needs of the user. The strength of the models was a key element of securing further funding from the UK Ministry of Defence in a competitive tender.

05/2001 – 07/2002 Consultant/Software Support Engineer, INBIS Group, UK

The post involved a range of activities including software development and maintaince for the INca constraint modeller and support of clients using the software, along with maintaining relationships with research partners and some engineering consultancy projects. These included carrying out Cost/Capability Trade Offs for the future aircraft carrier (CVF) project, which enabled our client to produce a feasible design concept of the carrier for a successful competitive tender to the UK Ministry of Defence, and research into the feasibility of an electromagnetic launch capability (EMCAT) to replace existing steam catapult technology on CVF.

05/2000 – 03/2001 Software Applications Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd, UK

The post involved research and development projects for the Radan CAD/CAM software. The projects were all aimed at a major release and were critical to the transition from a UNIX to Windows platform. As a result a number of clients were upgraded to the new Windows release with renewed support agreements and the new product release improved sales in the US market. The work was carried out under an ISO9001 quality system and provided exposure to the whole software development life cycle.

10/1998 – 04/2000 Research Associate, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, UK

The STARTright project involved collaboration with the University of Bristol, Westland Design Services Ltd and Alstom. The project investigated tendering processes for engineering projects. A prototype software tool and best practice handbook was produced and used by the industrial partners. In addition to the technical aspects, the role involved managing the distributed project team and being the point of contact for the industrial partners. This role also included an involvement in other research projects in the Centre, teaching of software development and engineering design courses, the supervision of postgraduate students and provision of research support and mentoring for emerging researchers in the EDC.

10/1996 – 09/1998 Research Officer, Engineering Design Centre, University of Bath, UK

The post involved working on both research and consultancy projects related to fluid power system design. The main research acheivement was the development of an efficient optimisation module for the simulation software Bathfp that reduced the design time of complex systems by over 80% in comparison with previous approaches. This role also involved teaching programming courses to undergraduate students, the delivery of professional development short courses in fluid power systems and an active role in the management and promotion of the Centre.

10/1994 – 09/1996 Research Assistant & Sessional Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

The post involved carrying out research into the design of complex multi degree of freedom machinery. A novel design methodology was developed that reduced the need for complex dynamic calculations. A real machine was designed using the methodology and built to verify performance. This work led to the submission of a PhD, entitled "The synthesis of hybrid mechanisms using genetic algorithms". In addition, courses were taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students, including solid mechanics, finite elements, engineering design and a new course in computer systems that required the development of course material and learning strategies.

Education

1996 Liverpool John Moores University, PhD, Mechatronics
1994 Liverpool John Moores University, MSc, Computer Aided Engineering
1993 Manchester University, BEng (Hons), Mechanical Engineering

Selected Publications

Sosa, R. & Connor, A.M. (2018) "Organisational creativity: Reasoning with computational simulations", She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation [In Press]
Schmidt, F., MacDonell, S. G. & Connor, A.M. (2018) "Multiobjective reconstruction of software architecture", International Journal of Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, 28(6), 869–892
Connor, A.M. & Siringoringo, W.S. (2017) "Multiobjective optimisation in residential construction", International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering, 3(4), 183-192
Greig, T.J., Kruse, J. & Connor, A.M. (2017) "Evaluating the contribution of search based procedural content generation to game immersion", The Computer Games Journal, 6(4), 209–225
Foottit, J., Brown, D., Marks, S. & Connor, A.M. (2016) "Development of a haptic game interface", EAI Transactions on Creative Technologies, 3(6), e5
Connor, A.M. & Gavin, J. (2015) "Reinventing the arcade: Computer game mediated play spaces for physical interaction", EAI Transactions on Creative Technologies 2(5), e4.
Whittington, C., Anderson, T. & Connor, A.M. (2017) "Embedding authentic practice based learning in engineering undergraduate courses", Proceedings of the 28th Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference
Connor, A.M. (2016) "Engaging undergraduates with research to promote cumulative learning", International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 6(2).
Connor, A.M., Karmokar, S. & Whittington, C. (2015) "From STEM to STEAM: Strategies for enhancing engineering & technology education", International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy, 5(2), 37-47.
Connor, A.M., Marks, S. & Walker, C. (2015) "Creating creative technologists: Playing with(in) education", Creativity in the Digital Age, Springer, 35-56.

$260k from the AUT Strategic Research Investment Fund in conjunction with Prof. Nik Kasabov for the INTELLECTE project: Intelligent information technologies for innovation, interaction and creativity in complex data modelling and decision support. (2014)
$8k from AUT contestable funds to support several summer research awards in the areas of automated knowledge extraction from student digital portfolios and search based software rearchitecturing. (2013)
$230k from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in conjunction with Prof. Stephen MacDonell. This is part of a total grant of $3m awarded to a consortium of Universities. (2007)
$90k from Technology New Zealand through the Technology for Industry Fellowship (TIF) scheme for investigating multiobjective optimisation of building layouts for improved propagation characteristics. (2006)
$15k from internal AUT contestable funds to examine the use of RFID technology as an object location system to assist the elderly in their home in conjunction with Dr Judith Symonds. (2006)
$25k from Technology New Zealand through the Technology for Industry Fellowship (TIF) scheme for investigating a layout optimisation approach for application in the building industry. (2005)
$360k from Technology New Zealand through the Technology for Business Growth (TBG) scheme in conjunction with the Building Integration Software Company. (2005)
$20k from Fonterra to conduct research and produce a guide to best practice in software assessment and procurement in conjunction with Prof. Stephen MacDonell and Prof. Nik Kasabov. (2004)
Named research provider for Xegen Ltd in TechNZ funded Technology Assessment (TAP) and TBG projects and assisted Xegen in securing $500k in venture capital funding from Singapore. (2004)
Named researcher on the EPSRC grant GR/M14357/01 (£210,113); Signposting tool to assist risk-reduced tendering. (1998)
Named researcher on the EPSRC grant GR/L26858/01 (£1,090,124); EDC for fluid power systems. (1998)
Named researcher on the EPSRC grant GR/J90466/01 (£133,802); The use of numerical optimization techniques for the selection and sizing of fluid power components. (1996)

Awards & Distinctions

Recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award for Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies. (2017)
Recipient of the Dean’s Service Award for Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies. (2013)
Highly commended in the 2010 Vice Chancellors Teaching Excellence Awards at AUT. (2010)
Nomination for the AuSM "Awesome" Award. (2009)

Selected Editorial Memberships

Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Intelligent Systems Design and Computing.
Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering.
Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security.
Section Editor for the Australasian Journal of Information Systems.
Member of the Editorial Review Board for the International Journal of Applied Evolutionary Computation.
Member of the Editorial Board for the EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies.
Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal on Advances in Software.
Member of the Review Board for Evolutionary Intelligence.
Member of the Review Board for Applied Intelligence.

Selected Service Committments

Programme Leader for the Master of Creative Technologies degree, AUT, (2018 - )
Member of the Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies Faculty Board, AUT (2018 - )
PhD Examination Convenor for AUT (2014 - )
Member of the Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies Learning & Teaching Committee, AUT (2014 - 2016)
Member of the University Programmes Approval and Review Committee, AUT (2014 - 2017)
Programme Leader of the Bachelor of Creative Technologies degree, AUT (2013-2014)
Associate Programme Leader for the Bachelor of Computer & Information Sciences, AUT (2011)

Interactive narratives for video game design, S. Alyaseri, PhD.
Rapid manufacturing impact on design based business model development, Antonio Esparza, PhD.
Human computer interaction in multi-agent environments, Jan Kruse, PhD.
Patterns in context: Searching text corpora to benefit second language learning, Zhi Quan, PhD
Evolutionary optimisation to minimise material waste, Wilson Siringoringo, PhD.
Evaluating a single-modality ground-based activity recognition sensor for human inclusion into digital systems, A. Rameka, MCT. (2018)
Evaluation of data visualisation technologies for air traffic controla>, Y. Lee, MCT. (2017)
Evaluating the perceived immersion of procedurally generated game levels, TJ Greig, MCT. (2016)
Investigating anticipated conventions of wearable devices as a mainstream technology, Matthew Martin, MCT. (2015) Interactive evolutionary computation in design applications for virtual worlds, Jan Kruse, MPhil. (2014)
Iterative and incremental search based software architecture evolution, Frederick Schmidt, PhD. (2014)
Collaboration patterns of successful globally distributed agile software teams: The role of core developers, Sherlock Licorish, PhD. (2013)
Multi-metric prediction of software build outcomes, Jacqui Finlay, PhD. (2013)
Performance evaluation of metaheuristics search techniques in resource allocation problems, Amit Shah, MCIS. (2011)
An investigation into requirements engineering capability in New Zealand, Alison Talbot, MCIS. (2010)
Early warning signs in software projects, Mihir Kothari, MCIS. (2010)
User directed search based reverse engineering, Frederick Schmidt, MCIS. (2010).
Contextual information retrieval from the world wide web, Dilip Limbu, PhD. (2008)
The value and validity of software estimation models built from multiple organization data, Kefu Deng, MPhil. (2008)
Using satisfaction arguments and rich traceability in requirements prioritisation, Praveen Motupally, MCIS. (2008)
Minimum cost polygon overlay with rectangular shape stock panels, Wilson Siringoringo, MCIS. (2007)