Last modification: December 14, 2000

Bertrand Ibrahim
Maître d'Enseignement et de Recherche (Assistant Professor)
Computer Science Department
University of Geneva, Switzerland


Personal information

Birth: December 16, 1954.
Civil state: married.
Nationality: Swiss.
Member of the IEEE Computer Society
Private address:
29, ch. des Moissons
CH-1294 Genthod, Switzerland
Professional address:
Université de Genève
24, rue du Général Dufour (see map)
CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland
E-mail address:
Bertrand.Ibrahim@cui.unige.ch
Tel:
Home: (+41 22) 774 46 35
Prof: (+41 22) 705 75 08
Fax:
Home: (+41 22) 774 46 35 - after eighth ring
Prof: (+41 22) 705 77 80
Telex:
Prof: CH 423 801 Uni

 

Table of Content

Languages

French (mother tongue).
English (fluently read, written, spoken)
German (smattering)

Education

1969-1973
High-school in College Voltaire, Geneva.
1973
Scientific Baccalaureate, passed with distinction, won the following prizes:
- Thomas Harvey (English)
- Givaudan (chemistry & physics)
- Marc Birkigt (mathematics, geometry & physics).
1973-1977
Master in Computer Science, University of Geneva.
1980-1982
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Geneva. Passed with distinction.
1977-now
Various post-graduate courses in Computer Science.

Professional Objectives

I enjoy teaching and doing interesting research in Computer Science. My main areas of interest are Visual programming, human-computer interaction, software engineering, software reuse, and application-level use of the Internet.

Qualifications

Experience Related to Professional Objectives

First area of experience
Other areas of experience

Professional Activities

1974-1975
Computer operator in a private company.
1973-1975
Development of timetable handling programs for different high-schools in Geneva.
1976
Programmer in a research project headed by Prof. Kapitanidis, in the chemistry faculty of the University of Geneva.
1977-1981
Teaching assistant of Prof. J. Harms for the Assembly Language course, at the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva.
1977-1981
Teaching assistant of Prof. B. Levrat for the Data Structures course, at the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva.
1981-1982
Teaching assistant of Prof. C. Pellegrini for the Data Structures course, at the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva.
1983-1985
Post-doctoral fellow at the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva. Supervision of a team of programmers in a Computer Based Learning project.
1984-1985
Lecturer in Computer Science at the department of Mathematics of the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne for a graduate course on "Project Management."
1985
Author and lecturer of a training course on Computer Based Learning for primary and secondary school teachers.
1985
Invited researcher in Computer Based Learning at the Educational Technology Center of the University of California, Irvine.
1986-now
Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva. Management of a research team in Software Engineering, Visual programming and Software reuse.
1986-now
Teaching an undergraduate course on Data Structures at the Computer Science department and the Business Computing department of the University of Geneva.
1987
Consultant in Computer Based Learning at the Educational Technology Center of the University of California, Irvine.
1988
Invited examiner at the Engineering School of Geneva.
1988
Reviewer for the 1988 European Conference on Computers in Education, held in Lausanne in July 1988.
1988
Chairman at the Computer Graphics International'88 conference held in Geneva.
1989-1998
Member of the commission of the D.I.P. (Geneva Ministry of Education) for the use of computers in education.
1989-1990
Chairman and member of the organizing committee of the Eurographics'90 conference.
1989
Ph.D. thesis examiner in the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva.
1991
Reviewer for the CALICE'91 conference held in Lausanne in September 1991.
1991-2000
Student counselor for the Computer Science department at the University of Geneva. It includes deciding of credit transfer for students having studied in foreign universities.
1992-1998
Reviewer for the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Editor: Professor R. Lewis
1994
Reviewer for the 1995 World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE'95).
1995
Reviewer for the 1995 Symposium on Software Reusability (SSR'95).
1995
Reviewer for the journal "Software - Practice & Experience."
1994-now
Maintainer of two entries in the WWW Virtual Library on "Visual Languages and Visual Programming" and "Tcl/Tk."
1994-1995
Member of the multimedia commission of the University of Geneva, in charge of designing a multimedia infrastructure for the University.
1995-now
Author and lecturer of continuing education courses on an introduction to Internet, on producing documents on the Web, on design and ergonomics of Web documents, on managing a Web site, on Internet security, on pedagogical uses of the Web, on an introduction to XML, and on an introduction to JavaScript.
1995-1996
Member of the "Commission de l'Enseignement" of the University of Geneva. Participation to putting in place a web-based on-line course evaluation system.
1996
Consultant for the State of Geneva, for their Internet Information Infrastructure.
1996-1997
Directed a commission in charge of revising the curriculum in Computer Science at the University of Geneva.
1996-now
Member of the "commission WWW" of the University of Geneva.
1997-1998
Guest editor of the June 1998 special issue of the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, on "Visual Navigation: Methods and Tools."
1998
Coordinator in Europe for the International Conference on Multimedia & Telecommunications Management, December 17-19, 1998, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Hong.
1998
Member of the INET '98 conference local organizing committee.
1998-1999
Chair of the WWW Virtual Library ad-hoc committee in charge of making the Virtual Library an official entity.
1998-1999
Reviewer and member of the Program Committee for the 1999 Symposium of Software Reusability (SSR'99) (see also the US site)
1999
Invited participant to a panel on "VL Market Place: What do VL Theories Offer and What do Applications Require", at the 1999 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages.
1999-...
Member, secretary and vice-chair of the elected council of the WWW Virtual Library.
1999-2000
Reviewer and member of the Program Committee for VL 2000: IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages.
2000-2001
Member of the organizing committee (Publicity and Web Chair) for HCC '01: IEEE Symposium on Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments.

Employment

Research projects

1978
Research on automatic signature recognition.
1978-1982
Research on human-computer interaction and interactive graphics.
1980-1982
Ph.D. thesis on "Study and Development of a Highly Interactive Graphic Editor."
1983-1992
Research in Computer Based Learning. This research focused mainly on:
- Free text answer analysis
- Multi-lingual educational material
- Use of a local area network for on-line supervision of CBL lessons
- Development of portable primitives for bitmap graphics in CBL lessons
- Use of Software Engineering techniques for the development of CBL material, mainly graphical specification, automatic programming and multi-window synchronized editing.
1985, 1987, 1989 & 1991
Invited researcher at the University of California, Irvine, in Prof. Alfred Bork's team.
1992-1993
Participation to the JITOL (Just In Time Open Learning) project, within the european DELTA research programme.
1992-now
Research on Software Reuse based on natural language specifications.
1993-now
Research on Visual Programming based on multiple visual paradigms.

Research grants obtained from the Swiss National Science Foundation

1988
136'844 CHF for a two year period
1990
143'804 CHF for a two year period
1992
70'553 CHF for a one year period
1993
66'615 CHF for a one year period
1994
131'142 CHF for a one year period
1995
123'800 CHF for a one year period
1996
119'332 CHF for a one year period
1997
321'073 CHF for a two year period
1999
122'829 CHF for a two year period

Invited Talks/Seminars

Jan. 1984:
Six hour course on Computer Assisted Learning for the Teachers of the "Ecole Supérieure de Commerce" in Geneva
Sep. 1984:
45 minute presentation at E.A.O. 84: Forum de l'enseignement assisté par ordinateur. Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lyon, France.
Mar. 1988:
One hour talk on "Techniques de Génie Logiciel pour le Développement de Didacticiels" at the Computer Science department of the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Nov. 1989:
One hour talk on "Programmation Graphique de Didacticiels" at the Centre d'Informatique Hospitalière, Geneva, Switzerland.
Feb. 1990:
One hour talk on "A Development Environment for Computer Based Learning" at the University of Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany.
July 1990:
One hour and a half talk on "Graphical Programming og Courseware" at the University of Erlangen, Federal Republic of Germany.
Apr. 1991:
One hour talk on "Introduction à X window system" at the University of Geneva.
Oct. 1991:
One hour and a half talk on "Le génie logiciel au secours de la didactique" at the Centre Informatique Pédagogique, Geneva, Switzerland.
May 1995:
Invited speaker at the "Learning and Working in Networks" conference in Karlstad, Sweden, May 10-11, 1995. Talk on "Pedagogical value of the World-Wide Web."

Published papers

The six most important publications are, in chronological order: 6, 19, 30, 43, 49, 50.

1977

1
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Réalisation d'un terminal simulant un superbee sans partie mécanique.
Master thesis in Computer Science, Geneva, 1977.

1979

2
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Levrat, Bernard.
Improved security through on-line signature recognition.
EURO IFIP 79, S.A. Samet Ed., London.
North-Holland, 1979, pp. 491-498.

1980

3
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Pellegrini, Christian.
Dis-moi comment tu signes, je te dirai qui tu es.
Cahiers de la faculte des Sciences, University of Geneva, N0. 2, April 1980, pp. 41-47.

1981

4
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Interactive creation and modification of drawings.
International conference on research and trends in document preparation systems.
Lausanne, February 27-28, 1981, pp. 73-76.

1982

5
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Pellegrini, Christian.
Hierarchical menus for natural interaction.
1982 International Zürich seminar on digital communication, pp. 219-223.

6
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Etude et réalisation d'un éditeur graphique fortement interactif.
Ph.D. thesis, No. 2062, Geneva, 1982.

1985

7
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Traitement de projets I.
Lecture notes for graduate students in mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne, 1985.

8
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Bork, Alfred; Courbon, Jean-Claude; Franklin, Stephen D; Kühni, Christiane; Levrat, Bernard.
Interactive modules to teach spreadsheet analysis.
Proceedings of WCCE/85, K.A. Duncan & D. Harris Ed., pp 181-186,
North-Holland, 1985.

9
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Kühni, Christiane.
On-line supervision of CBL through LANs.
Journal "Education & Computing", vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 243-247,
North-Holland, 1985, ISSN 0167-9287.

1986

10
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Pellegrini, Christian.
Structures de données.
Lecture notes for undergraduate students in Computer Science and business computing, October 1986, 102 pages.

1987

11
Comtesse, Xavier; Ibrahim, Bertrand; Levrat, Bernard.
A cognitive model of representation applied to CAL.
IASTED international conference: Expert systems, theory and applications.
Geneva, June 16-18, 1987, pp. 64-77.

12
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Levrat, Bernard.
Microcomputers for active learning.
34th ISMM international conference: Mini and microcomputers.
Lugano, June 29-July 1, 1987, pp. 15-18, ISBN 0-88986-124-2.

13
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Levrat, Bernard.
Portability aspects for raster graphics on microcomputers.
34th ISMM international conference: Mini and microcomputers.
Lugano, June 29-July 1, 1987, pp. 19-21, ISBN 0-88986-124-2.

14
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Impact on interactivity of high performance finger input device.
3rd international symposium on handwriting and computer applications,
Montreal, July 20-23, 1987, pp 191-193, Réjean Plamondon, Ching Y. Suen, Jean-Guy Deschênes and Gilles Poulin, editors, ISBN 2-553-00197-5.

15
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Pellegrini, Christian.
Structures de données.
Lecture notes, November 1987, 135 pages.

1988

16
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Portabilité graphique et logiciels éducatifs.
Computer graphics international'88, workshop on education.
Geneva, May 24-27, 1988.

1989

17
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Software engineering techniques for CAL.
Journal "Education & Computing", Vol 5, pp 215-222,
Elsevier Science Publishers, 1989. (Postscript version 23Kb)

18
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Aubord, Alain; Laustsen, Birgit; Tepper, Michael.
Techniques de Génie Logiciel pour l'EAO.
Conference on "Enseignement et Apprentissage avec l'Ordinateur",
Martigny, November 23-24, 1989, pp 120-129. (Postscript version 21Kb)

1990

19
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Aubord, Alain; Laustsen, Birgit; Tepper, Michael.
Courseware CAD.
WCCE/90, Sydney 9-13 July 1990, Conference Proceedings, pp 383-389,
North-Holland, 1990, ISBN 0 444 88750 4. (Postscript version 20Kb)

20
Bork, Alfred; Ibrahim, Bertrand; Laustsen, Birgit; Levrat, Bernard.
A Self-Instructional Mailer.
WCCE/90, Conference abstracts,
North-Holland, 1990.

21
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Graphics - Education.
State of the Art Report.
Eurographics'90, Montreux, September 3-7, 1990. (Postscript version 93Kb)

1991

22
Aubord, Alain; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Interprétation des intentions des concepteurs de didacticiels.
13èmes Journées Francophones sur l'Informatique, Conference Proceedings, pp 181-195,
Geneva, January 9-10, 1991. (Postscript version 48Kb)

23
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Fernandez-Valmajor, Alfredo; Mispelkamp, Harald; Olimpo, Giorgio; Ulloa, Antonio; van der Mast, Charles; Vivet, Martial.
Alice in Authorland! (or is it Authors in wonderland?)
Workshop report, NATO Advanced Research Workshop: "Authoring Environments for Computer-based Courseware", Maratea, Italy, 26-30 May 1991.

1992

24
Bork, Alfred; Ibrahim, Bertrand; Laustsen, Birgit; Levrat, Bernard.
A Self-Instructional Mailer.
Ninth International Conference on Technology and Education,
Conference Proceedings, Nolan Estes and Michael Thomas, Editors, pp 871-873,
Paris, March 16-20, 1992. (Postscript version 11Kb)

25
Bork, Alfred; Ibrahim, Bertrand; Levrat, Bernard; Milne, Alastair; Yoshii, Rika.
The Irvine-Geneva Course Development System.
IFIP Congress '92, Conference Proceedings ISSN 0926-5473, pp 253-261,
Madrid, September 7-11, 1992, ISBN 0 444 89748 8.

1993

26
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
New Approaches for Reuse Systems.
Second International Workshop on Software Reuse (IWSR-2), Position Paper
Lucca, Italy, March 24-26, 1993. (Postscript version 13Kb)

27
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Increasing the Translation Power of a Courseware Generator.
Computer Assisted Learning Conference (CAL '93), Conference Proceedings, p. 174
York, April 5-8, 1993.

28
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
An Approach to Improve the Effectiveness of Software Retrieval.
ISS '93, Conference Proceedings of the third Irvine Software Symposium, pp 89-100, Costa Mesa, California, April 30, 1993, Debra J. Richardson and Richard N. Taylor, editors, University of California, Irvine. (Postscript version 24Kb)

29
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
A Software Reuse System Based on Natural Language Specifications.
Fifth International Conference on Computing and Information, Conference Proceedings, pp 507-511, Sudbury, Ontario Canada, May 27-29, 1993. (Postscript version 32Kb)

30
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Au-delà de la convivialité: Les logiciels auto-éducatifs.
Revue Informatique/Informations No 22, Publication du Département de l'instruction publique de Genève, October 1993, pp 21-23. (Postscript version 14Kb)

1994

31
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
World-Wide Algorithm Animation.
in Advance Proceedings of The First World-Wide Web Conference - WWW'94, Geneva, Switzerland, May 25-27, 1994, pp 305-316. (Postscript version 42Kb).

32
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
World-Wide Algorithm Animation.
in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, Vol. 27, No. 2, Nov. 1994, Special Issue, Selected Papers of the First World-Wide Web Conference, pp 255-265.

33
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
A Similarity Measure for Retrieving Software Artifacts.
Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Jurmala, Latvia, June 21-23, 1994, pp 478-485. (Postscript version 34Kb).

34
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Distance learning with the World-Wide Web.
in Proceedings of the International Conference on Open and Distance Learning - Critical Success Factors, 10-12 October 1994, Geneva, Switzerland. ( Postscript version 13Kb).

35
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
A Classification Scheme for Software Artifacts.
Fifth ASIS SIG/CR (American Society for Information Science, Classification Research workshop), Oct. 16, 1994, Alexandria, Virginia, USA. (Postscript version 11Kb).

36
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Automatic indexing of software artifacts.
Third International Conference on Software Reusability, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 1-4, 1994, pp 24-32.

37
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Pedagogical Value of the World-Wide Web.
in Proceedings of the European DELTA Conference "Telematics for Education and Training", Düsseldorf/Neuss, 24-26 November 1994, Paul Held & Walter F. Kugemann, Editors, IOS Press, 1995, pp 401-407.

38
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Pedagogical Value of the World-Wide Web.
in ALT News 08/94 (Applied Learning Technologies in Europe), Nov. 94, pp 10-12.

1995

39
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Using English to retrieve Software.
The Journal of System and Software, Special issue on Software Reusability, Vol. 30, No. 3, Sep. 1995, pp 249-270.

40
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Une Nouvelle Etape dans la Convivialité: Les Logiciels Auto-Educatifs.
La revue de l'Association EPI (Enseignement Public et Informatique), Informatique et technologies modernes dans l'enseignement et la formation, Paris, No. 77, mars 1995, ISSN: 1254-3985, pp 137-142.
41
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Franklin, Stephen D.
Advanced Educational Uses of the World-Wide Web.
Third World-Wide Web Conference - WWW'95, Darmstadt, Germany, April 10-14, 1995, in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, Vol. 27, No. 6, April 1995, pp 871-877, Elsevier, ISSN 0169-7552.

42
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Franklin, Stephen D.
Les réseaux externes: INTERNET et les autoroutes de l'information.
La revue "Sciences et techniques éducatives", numéro hors série "L'enseignement sur mesure dans les universités françaises", Vol. 2, No. 4, 1995, ISSN: 1265-1338, pp 425-433. (French translation of the article Advanced Educational Uses of the World-Wide Web)

1996

43
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Franklin, Stephen D.; Levrat, Bernard.
Free-Text Answer Analysis on the Web.
invited paper for the journal Informatique et Statistique dans les Sciences Humaines (RISSH), special issue on Internet and hypermedia systems, University of Liège, Joseph Denooz, Editor, 1996, ISSN 0030-4972, pp 145-154.

1997

44
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Use of HTML Forms for Complex User Interfaces to Server-Side Applications.
International Journal of Human Computer Studies, No. 46, 1997, special issue on Innovative Applications of the World Wide Web, Academic Press Ltd., pp 761-771. ISSN 1071-5819/97/060685

45
Girardi, Maria del Rosario; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Software Architectures to Improve the Effectiveness of Reuse Techniques.
8th Annual Workshop on Software Reuse (WISR8), March 23-26, 1997, Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, USA.

46
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Optimizing Cut-and-Paste Operations in Directed-Graph Editing.
7th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International '97), San Francisco, California, August 24-29, 1997, pp. 359-362. ISBN 0 444 82183 X

1998

47
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Guest editor's Foreword.
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, June 1998 special issue on Visual Navigation: Methods and Tools.
48
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Optimizing Cut-and-Paste on Directed Graphs, with a User-Controlled Edge Reconstruction Strategy.
In 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages (VL'98), Halifax, Canada, September 1998, pp 90-91. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN 0-8186-8712-6. ISSN 1049-2615.
49
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Diagrammatic representation of data types and data manipulations in a combined data- and control-flow language.
In proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages, Halifax, Canada, September 1998, pp 262-269. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN 0-8186-8712-6. ISSN 1049-2615.

1999

50
Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Semiformal Visual Languages, Visual Programming at a Higher Level of Abstraction.
In proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the ISAS (Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis) / The Third Conference of the SCI (Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics), Orlando, Florida, USA, July 31-August 4 1999, ISBN: 980-07-5916-6, pp 157-164.
51
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Yoshizumi, Hidenori.
Solving the Spaghetti Plate Syndrome in a Control-Flow Language with a VLSI-Like Solution.
In proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages, Tokyo, Japan, September 13-16, 1999, ISBN: 0-7695-0216-4, pp. 202-203.

2000

52
Randriamparany, Honitriniela; Ibrahim, Bertrand.
Parallel application specification with the DIVA system; in proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering Applied to Networking and Parallel/ Distributed Computing (SNPD '00), Reims, France, May 18-21, 2000, ISBN: 0-9700776-0-2, pp. 35-42.
53
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Randriamparany, Honitriniela; Yoshizumi, Hidenori.
Relevance of Graph-Drawing Algorithms to Graph-Based Interfaces; in proceedings of the 2000 International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, Palermo, Italy, May 23-26, 2000, ISBN: 1-58113-252-2, pp. 290-291.
54
Ibrahim, Bertrand; Randriamparany, Honitriniela; Yoshizumi, Hidenori.
Improving Readability in a Visual Language with a VLSI-Like Approach; in proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (VL2000), Seattle, Washington, September 10-13, 2000, ISBN 0-7695-0840-5, pp. 69-70.

Books

(1)
B. Ibrahim, C. Pellegrini.
Structuration des Données Informatiques, Initiation et Applications.
Dunod S.A. Ed., Paris, 1989. ISBN 2-04-018679-4