Keynote Speaker: Barry Dwolatzky
Director & CEO
Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University

Professor Barry Dwolatzky qualified as an Electrical Engineer at Wits University in 1975. After completing his doctorate at Wits in 1979 he spent 10 years in Britain working on software-related research at the Universities of Manchester (UMIST) and London (Imperial College), and at the GEC-Marconi Research Centre. He worked on a number of large software development projects.

He returned to Wits in 1989 where he educates software engineers and carries out research. Barry’s major passion is to promote the growth and development of the South African software industry. He has been the driving force behind a number of strategic initiatives at Wits. He established a new degree option in Information Engineering within Electrical Engineering at Wits. He developed a course-based Masters programme in Software Engineering, and succeeded in having this registered as a Learnership within the SA Government’s skills development framework. He has also been a major player in setting up the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits. In 2007 he became Director and CEO of the JCSE.

In 2006 the JCSE, under Barry’s direction, established a partnership with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA. Over the past 4 years the JCSE has worked with the SEI to “Bring CMMI to South Africa”. A pilot TSP adoption programme was initiated in 2009 by the JCSE in South Africa. Barry is a certified CMMI Instructor and a candidate PSP Instructor.

Prof Dwolatzky has published over 40 research papers in journals and conferences and has supervised 24  MSc students and 4 PhD’s. He consults on IT development issues for South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, and other large organisations. He is also Chair of the SA Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society. In 2005 he was one of 5 finalists for the prestigious Computer Society of South Africa’s “IT Personality of the Year”.

Keynote Speaker: David R. Webb
Technical Director
309th Software Maintenance Group, Hill Air Force Base, Utah

David R. Webb is a Technical Director for the 520th Software Maintenance Squadron of the 309th Software Maintenance Group at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, a CMMI Level 5 software organization. David is a project management and process improvement specialist with 23 years of technical, program management, and process improvement experience on Air Force software. He is a SEI authorized instructor of the Personal Software Process, a Team Software Process launch coach, and he has worked as an Air Force manager, SEPG member, systems software engineer, lead software engineer and test engineer. He is a frequent contributor to technical journals and symposiums. David holds a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Brigham Young University.

Keynote Speaker: Cynthia Dion-Schwarz, Ph.D.,SES
Director, Information Systems & Cyber Security DDR&E/Research Directorate

Cynthia Dion-Schwarz is the Director of Information Systems & Cyber Security in the Research Directorate, Office of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E). She was selected as member of the Senior Executive Service in 2008.  She is responsible for the strategic oversight of the science and technology research in Information Technologies in the DoD, an investment of over $2B. She is also the program executive for ~$400M per year research programs in tactical networked communications, software initiatives, cyber security, and DoD’s high performance computing and the DoD sponsor of the Software Engineering Institute. She also conducts oversight for all DoD Technology Readiness Assessments and policy in information systems acquisition programs on behalf of the Director, Research. Currently, she also serves as the DoD lead representative to Federal and International forums for Information Technology Research. 
  
Dr. Dion-Schwarz received her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Mathematics summa cum laude in 1988 from George Mason University, attended Duke University to study graduate-level mathematics, completed her Ph.D. in Physics in 1995 from the University of Maryland at College Park, and attended Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, earning her Senior Executive Leadership Certification in 2005. 

She has published more than 75 articles, refereed papers, book chapters, and conference proceedings, won numerous awards for research and community service, and served on the executive board of the American Physical Society/Forum for Industrial and Applied Physics (APS/FIAP) from 2002-2005.