Home           About Us          Resume          FAQ          Downloads           Services            Contact Us           

C. Douglass Locke, Ph.D.

Software and Systems Consultant

704-746-3647 Office

704-253-4957 Fax   

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

At present, Dr. Locke is a full-time consultant with a variety of clients involved primarily in Military, Aerospace, Industrial Control, and Telecommunications systems.  His extensive background in areas such as software performance, real-time architecture, design, implementation, and deployment, standards, software engineering maturity, and software organization can make a major impact on complex systems.  He is frequently involved in software and systems engineering reviews and audits, overcoming obstacles, and identifying and mitigating software and system risks.  

In addition to his work with clients involved in specifying, building, and deploying embedded and real-time systems, he also has experience serving as an Expert (including expert reports, depositions and courtroom testimony) in embedded and real-time software-related litigation.  Two recent litigations involved patents related to computer controls for heavy-duty truck transmissions and safety/control systems for hospital proton beam therapy systems.

Until February 2004, Dr. Locke served as the Vice President of Technology for TimeSys Corporation, a producer of Embedded Linux distributions and software development tools.  In this position, he had responsibility for defining the technology base for the corporation and extending it to meet customer requirements.  In addition, he served as a key consultant and instructor for TimeSys critical projects and classes, provided key customers with systems and software consultation, and provided an external presence for the corporation in the embedded systems community with frequent publications and public presentations.

Prior to January 2000, Dr. Locke was the Chief Scientist of the Lockheed Martin Systems Solutions organization.  His responsibilities there were to define the software and systems technology focus for a new business thrust involving efforts by major industries worldwide transitioning from mainframe-based, “stovepipe” application architectures to distributed architectures.  Most of the customers for this formerly exclusively aerospace organization required exploitation of the same kind of real-time, limited footprint, embedded systems experience for which Lockheed Martin is well known.  In addition to his work with major commercial customers, he also consulted extensively with other major Lockheed Martin projects across the corporation.

From June 1996 to August 1998, he was the Chief Scientist of Lockheed Martin's Software & Systems Resource Center (SSRC).  His responsibilities there centered primarily on systems / software consulting across Lockheed Martin, guiding technology dissemination activities at the SSRC, reviewing / updating the SSRC's educational offerings, teaching (e.g., Real-Time Systems Analysis, and Object Oriented Real-Time Architecture), and leading / participating in program reviews / audits.  A wide variety of projects were supported such as SBIRS, SBIS, Air Traffic Control, GPS, various avionics systems, CCTT, LAMPS, and AWACS.

With Lockheed Martin (formerly Loral and IBM Federal Systems), he has spent more than 30 years intimately involved in the design and implementation of many major systems spanning a wide range of applications including space (both ground based and flight), aircraft, shipboard, submarine, command & control, and information systems.  His principal technical interests are in distributed systems / software architecture, distributed real-time systems, software engineering (especially for real-time applications), performance-critical object oriented systems architecture, open systems, standards, artificial intelligence systems, real-time scheduling theory and practice, and operating systems (especially performance-related issues.)

Since 1981, Dr. Locke has acted as a consultant to all levels of management, senior technical staff, and customers for a wide variety of Lockheed Martin, Loral, and IBM system development, research, product development, and standards activities.  This consultation covered both management and technical issues related to real-time software development, open systems, Ada, C, and C++ real-time applications, and general systems performance.  Projects on which he has spent significant amounts of time include the Air Force's Theater Battle Management Core System, the Global Positioning System, Air Traffic Control, the UK Ministry of Defense Merlin System (Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopter), the Navy's LAMPS ASW helicopter system, the Army's Rotorcraft Pilot's Associate, and the Army's Sustaining Base Information System. 

In addition, he frequently led and participated in major project audits and reviews, especially for major proposals, projects experiencing cost/schedule perturbations, and projects experiencing performance difficulties. 

Between 1992 and 1995, he served as a regular instructor for the U.S. Air Force's Operation Bold-Stroke, teaching software management principles to senior officers (Generals, Colonels, and equivalent civilian staff).

While at TimeSys Corporation, Dr. Locke was the Maintenance Lead for the Real-Time Specification for Java, also known as JSR-1 under the Java Community Process (www.jcp.org).  He was a member of the Object Management Group’s (OMG’s) Architecture Board responsible for the overall technical direction of the OMG.  In addition, he served extensively on the OMG’s Realtime Special Interest Group (RTSIG) developing extensions of CORBA for real-time and fault-tolerant applications.  He also served with the IEEE’s Standards organization as an active member of the POSIX 1003.4 Real‑Time Extensions Working Group from 1987 through 1994, becoming the principal author of the POSIX Execution Scheduling chapter.  He continues to be active on IEEE interpretations committees for POSIX.  In addition, he participated in the real-time aspects of the FutureBus+ arbitration protocol, and has consulted on the real-time aspects of several SAE communications standards.

Dr. Locke served as an associate editor of the Real-Time Systems Journal, and continues to serve as an associate editor of the Software Practice & Experience Journal. Additionally, he served as the chair of the IEEE's Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems for which he currently serves on its executive committee, and has served as Program Chair and General Chair of the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, Program Chair and General Chair of the IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Application Symposium, Co-Program Chair of the Third International Workshop on Real-Time Ada Issues, and on numerous program committees for technical meetings on real-time systems, distributed systems, software engineering, and Ada. 

He is a frequently invited speaker on real-time systems architecture, design, implementation, and analysis at academic and industry conferences and workshops worldwide.

Prior to these responsibilities, he led the design and implementation of a classified Air Force aircraft flight control program, served as the architect of the U.S. Navy’s LAMPS antisubmarine helicopter/shipboard system, worked on several NASA projects (including Voyager, Apollo and the Space Shuttle) and has held a number of other technical and management leadership assignments, resulting in a number of awards, including two IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards.

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1986.  Dissertation Title: Best-Effort Decision Making for Real-Time Scheduling

B.A., Physics, Kalamazoo College, 1965

 

PUBLICATIONS (Partial List)

  • Java Technology Comes to Real-Time Applications, Proceedings of the IEEE, July, 2003

  • Real-Time Database Applications and System Characteristics, in Real-Time Database Systems: Architecture and Techniques, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001

  • Software Architectures for Hard Real-Time Applications: Cyclic Executives vs. Fixed Priority Executives, Real-Time Systems Journal, April, 1992

  • Building a Predictable Avionics Platform in Ada: A Case Study, Proceedings of the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, December, 1991

  • Scheduling in Real-Time, UNIX Review, pp. 48-54, Vol 8, No. 9, September, 1990

  • Predictable Real-time Avionics Design Using Ada Tasks and Rendezvous, Fourth International Workshop on Real-Time Ada Issues, ACM - SIGAda Ada Letters, June, 1990

  • Priority Inversion and its Control: An Experimental Investigation, Second International Workshop on Real-Time Ada Issues, ACM - SIGAda Ada Letters, June, 1988

  • A Practical Application of the Priority Ceiling Protocol in a Real-Time System, Second International Workshop on Real-Time Ada Issues, ACM - SIGAda Ada Letters, June, 1988

  • The Avionics Software Architecture Impact on System Architecture, Proceedings of the AGARD (Advisory Group for Aerospace Research & Development) Conference, Sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, April, 1987

  • Problems in Ada Runtime Task Scheduling, First International Workshop on Real-Time Ada Issues, ACM - SIGAda Ada Letters, May, 1987

  • A Time-Driven Scheduling Model for Real-Time Operating Systems, Proceedings of the Real-Time Systems Symposium, December, 1985

  • The Ada Programming Support Environment, in Ada: A Tutorial, Published by IEEE, 1983 (Previously published in IBM FSD's Software Engineering Exchange)