Thomas J. Wheeler, Ph.D.

Thomas J. Wheeler, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the University of Maine. He received the Ph.D. degree in EE/CS in 1988. He started at the University in the Fall of 1999 after a thirty four year career as a Physicist, Electronic Engineer and Computer Scientist a US Government research laboratory.

Teaching: Before comming to Maine he taught Computer Science and Software Engineering for Stevens Institute of Technology and started a Masters of Software Engineering program at Monmouth University. Since Comming to Maine he has taught undergraduate Networks, Databases, Software Engineering, Compilers, and Architecture. He has taught graduate Databases, Software Engineering and Design. He has also given guest lectures in Discrete Structures, Poetry and New Media

Research Experience: He has done research and design in Intelligence, Software Engineering Environments, Programming Languages, Formal Specification and Verification, Software Interfacing and Interoperability, Distributed Systems, Modeling and Simulation, Computer Aided Design, Computer  Tom Making Bricks *                         | Assisted Learning, and Multi-Discipline Systems. In   __________________________________| addition to publishing research papers and building systems in these areas, he developed international or national standards in many of them.

His Current Research Centers on Three areas: First, Image Schema, Affordances, Metaphor, Frame, Blend (“embodied") , Cognitive Modeling Semantics in analysis, modeling, integration and presentation in multidiscipline systems. This type of model eases analysis, allows mental and computational simulation as well as inferencing, creating a more powerful, yet more natural basis for understanding, integration and interoperation. It provides views for presentation which assist in insight through mapping onto domains and disciplines natural mental models and external, shared depictions and explanations.

Second, BioInformatics serves as a complex application area in which to work out a multi level, multi subsystem integration framework, as well as validating the Cognitive Science Based approach ti modeling and integration.The system approach to microbiology promises the needed integration of the biological hierarchy. Our System BioInformatics framework provides for integration and visualization (&envisioning), creating both a platform for experimenting with automating integration and an "aiming point" for evolving the large ongoing informatics research efforts It has three aspects, a multilevel biological model of life (in our case a cell) as a System, a corresponding multilevel collection of computer model, and an semantic “lens” interface for integration across level boundaries and between components within levels.

Third, Annotation of (semistructured) text and graphic depictions promises to aid and automate the production and understanding of explanations, which are the foundation of any (multidisciplinary) understanding of a new or different discipline. We have produced prototypes of semiautomated modeling of textual explanations using Cognitive semantics techniques.