Frederick T. Sheldon Background

Sheldon joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (CCSD) in 2002 when he returned from a stint at DaimlerChrysler Research RIC/AS Stuttgart Germany, in system safety. Prior, he was an assistant professor at The Washington State Universtiy (EECS) and The Universtiy of Colorado (Computer Science) in Colorado Springs. In the aerospace industry he was a Software Design / Testability Engineer and Researcher in the areas of advanced avionics and diagnostics software at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Systems. He has participated in industrial R&D activities investigating formal methods used in software development and is currently focusing on solutions to the general problem of security and dependability / survivability of complex software and electronic systems.

Sheldon received his Ph.D. from The Universtiy of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in 1996 while supported by a fellowship ('93-95) from NASA Langley Research Center and an NRC Postdoc ('96). In 1997-98 he was an ASEE research fellow at Stanford Universtiy / NASA Ames Research Center. He received an M.S. in CS from UTA ('88) and a B.S. in CS from The Universtiy of Minnesota at Mpls./St. Paul ('83). He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer and Reliability Societies and a member of ACM, Tau Beta Pi and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. He received the Outstanding Research by a Ph.D. Student Award in CSE ('95-96) from the College of Engineering at UTA and the Outstanding Dissertation Award ('96-97) from the UTA Chapter of the Sigma Xi Scientific and Research Society.

	Welcome
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Sheldon joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (CCSD) in 2002 when he returned from a stint at DaimlerChrysler Research RIC/AS Stuttgart Germany, in system safety. Prior, he was an assistant professor at The Washington State Universtiy (EECS) and The Universtiy of Colorado (Computer Science) in Colorado Springs. In the aerospace industry he was a Software Design / Testability Engineer and Researcher in the areas of advanced avionics and diagnostics software at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Systems. He has participated in industrial R&D activities investigating formal methods used in software development and is currently focusing on solutions to the general problem of security and dependability / survivability of complex software and electronic systems. Sheldon received his Ph.D. from The Universtiy of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in 1996 while supported by a fellowship ('93-95) from NASA Langley Research Center and an NRC Postdoc ('96). In 1997-98 he was an ASEE research fellow at Stanford Universtiy / NASA Ames Research Center. He received an M.S. in CS from UTA ('88) and a B.S. in CS from The Universtiy of Minnesota at Mpls./St. Paul ('83). He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer and Reliability Societies and a member of ACM, Tau Beta Pi and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. He received the Outstanding Research by a Ph.D. Student Award in CSE ('95-96) from the College of Engineering at UTA and the Outstanding Dissertation Award ('96-97) from the UTA Chapter of the Sigma Xi Scientific and Research Society.
Teaching Philosophy An education should be an opportunity to realize and reinforce your potential (talents and skills). An educator should present the problems and issues in a positive light and endeavor to draw forth the students capabilities in addressing those issues. An education (in my view) is not a matter of pouring the facts and solutions into the student's head. Rather it should be a process of discovery and affirmation so that the results can be an honest and long-lasting resource to the student. The process should be fun, exciting, edifying, practical and productive. It is important to establish opportunities for the students to explore their creative and analytical abilities: developing guidelines for practical, challenging and innovative group projects, sending outstanding project reports to local conferences, recruiting students by sponsoring high school or junior college projects, developing new courses related to my areas of research, collaborating with internal and/or external faculty on cross-disciplinary courses and projects, or bringing in industry to motivate and sponsor class topics and semester projects.
Ethics Ethics, especially as it is taught and experienced in school is important because today's students will be tomorrow's leaders. One should not only teach the technology, making a complicated subject simple, but instill a sense of responsibility and good character in using and applying such technology. In order to be effective in such an ideal, the teacher should strive in setting well meaning standards. Honesty in the classroom should be emphasized by rewarding independent work and conversely, by rewarding the fruits of team projects in an appropriate manner. Its extremely important to be fair, approachable and encouraging in a practical and sensible light. Sometimes its not a matter of answering or solving the problem as much as its asking the right questions.