Oscar Nierstrasz

Oscar Nierstrasz is a Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science (IAM) of the University of Bern, where he founded the Software Composition Group in 1994. Prof. Nierstrasz is co-author of over 200 publications and co-author of the books Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns and Pharo by Example.

The Software Composition Group carries out research in diverse aspects of how to make systems more flexible with respect to changing requirements. Current research is focussed on (i) programming languages and mechanisms to support software evolution, and (ii) tools and environments to support the reverse- and re-engineering of complex software systems.

Prof. Nierstrasz has been active in the international object-oriented research community. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Object Technology, he has served on the programme committees of the ECOOP, OOPSLA, ESEC and many other conferences, and as the Programme Chair of ECOOP ’93, ESEC/FSE ’99 and MoDELS ’06. He has served several times as president and vice-president of CHOOSE, the subgroup on object-oriented systems and environments of the Swiss Informatics Society.

Oscar Nierstrasz was born in the Netherlands, but grew up in Ontario, Canada. He completed his B.Math at the University of Waterloo in 1979 and his M.Sc. in 1981 and his Ph.D. in 1984 at the University of Toronto, in the area of Office Information Systems. He worked at the FORTH Institute of Computer Science in Crete for one year (1985), and has lived since then in Switzerland. He was a member of the Object Systems Group at the Centre Universitaire d’Informatique of the University of Geneva, Switzerland (1985-1994) before coming to Bern.