Rate My Professor Julie McCann

Julie McCann is Professor of Computer Systems and Head of the Adaptive Emergent Systems Engineering (AESE) group in the Department of Computing within the Faculty of Engineering. Her research specializations center on spatial computing systems that integrate digital and physical environments, enabling collaboration, swarming, and conjoining capabilities in sensor networks, cyber-physical systems, and the Internet of Things. These systems exhibit ephemeral and dynamic properties, with evolving roles and behaviors to tackle challenges such as scalability, failure robustness, resource and energy efficiency, and decomposability. Professor McCann employs models inspired by biology, economics, social dynamics, and physics to devise decentralized algorithms, cross-layer protocols, and dynamic optimization techniques optimized for low-power, resource-constrained wireless devices. Her contributions extend to practical applications in space exploration, agriculture, and infrastructure engineering, improving overall system performance, resilience, and security via cyber-physical synergies.

In her distinguished career, she serves as Vice Dean for Research in the Faculty of Engineering, Strategic Leader for the Resilient and Robust Infrastructure Grand Challenge at the Alan Turing Institute, Principal Investigator for the NRF-funded Singapore Eco Cities initiative, and Deputy Director of the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence, spearheading the Logistics 4.0 project. Previously, she co-directed the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, the NEC Smart Water Lab, and the cross-Imperial Smart Connected Futures Network. She chaired the Department of Computing Equality and Diversity Committee from 2018 to 2021, teaches the Pervasive Computing module, and consults on futuristic computer scenarios for television and film. A Fellow of the British Computer Society and Chartered Engineer, she acts as Associate Editor for the IoT Journal and has chaired prominent conferences including Infocom, Sensys, IPSN, and EWSN. Key publications encompass 'A survey of autonomic computing—degrees, models, and applications' (2008), 'A survey on the IETF protocol suite for the Internet of Things: Standards, challenges, and opportunities' (2014), 'Modulation and multiple access for 5G networks' (2017), and 'A survey of potential security issues in existing wireless sensor network protocols' (2017), amassing over 9,600 citations.