Dr. Peter Chang

Associate Professor
MSIS/DMIT Programs
Buell Building M325
Phone (248) 204-3065
chang@ltu.edu

Areas of Expertise

Research and problem solving methodologies, object oriented analysis and design, data management, Web service, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web middleware and server technologies, software development, and data and web security.

Biography

Dr. Chang has over thirty-four years of combined academic and industrial experiences.  For about twenty years, Dr. Chang has designed, developed, and consulted in leading edge information system technologies. His fields of interests are in object oriented analysis and design, database modeling (for both object oriented and relational approaches), data warehousing, data mining, web service, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), web middleware and server technologies, software development, and data and web security.

Dr. Chang serves as an Associate Professor of the College of Management and a member of the DMIT faculty committee since 2001. Prior to his current position, he was an adjunct professor of the College of Management since 1998.

Dr. Chang graduated from University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in Mathematics in the division of Institute of Technology. The title of his dissertation is "An Investigation of the Breakdown of Solutions of Models of Nonlinear Vibrating String."  One of the research areas of his dissertation is about analysis and modeling of the physics problem of nonlinear waves, including vibrating strings, using advanced methods in mathematics.  Many real world problems such as some in Physics, Economics, or Transportation are nonlinear in nature.  For example, nonlinear waves may model transportation problems such as traffic flows.

Dr. Chang also received a M.S. degree in Computer Information Systems from Oakland University and an M.S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Iowa.

Teaching Experience

Dr. Chang has taught at University of Alberta, University of Western Ontario, Iowa State University, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha for a number of years. He has published papers in the areas of information systems, computer sciences and mathematics in some prestigious technical journals or conference proceedings. Dr. Chang was elected as a graduate faculty fellow of the University of Nebraska System in 1982 with the privilege of supervising doctoral students, and has participated in various committee activities.

Professional Experience

Dr. Chang switched to the IT industry and worked for about 20 years with major telecommunication companies, computer manufacturing companies, and IT consulting companies including AT&T, IBM, and Accenture. He served in senior roles as analyst, developer, architect, and manager. Dr. Chang also founded an IT consulting company and serves as its president. Past clients of this company include AT&T, HP, Ernest & Young, DTE Energy, and Borders Groups Inc. His work has covered a wide spectrum of IT ranging from operating systems and database internals (at IBM), to network and telecommunication (at AT&T), to database and Web-based business enterprise applications (at Accenture and Borders Groups). Dr. Chang has published or presented several dozen technical articles and industrial white papers.

Dr. Chang was invited by Prentice Hall to serve as a book reviewer in 2002, and has completed a review of the manuscript of the 2nd edition of "Object-Oriented Modeling and Design with UML" by James Rumbaugh and Michael Blaha. The first edition of this text was a best seller for technology books with over 400,000 copies sold worldwide.  Dr. Chang was also invited by Prentice Hall to serve as a book reviewer in 2007, and has completed a review of the manuscript of "SOA: Principles of Service Design" by Thomas Erl, author of several best sellers in SOA and Web services published by Prentice Hall.

Dr. Chang refereed papers for the journal of IEEE Software and the SOA magazine.  He also refereed papers for various professional conferences.  Dr. Chang received the best paper award in Research Methodology from a 5-member international committee for the VIPSI-2007 Tokyo Conference.

Dr. Chang was granted two software patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the area of information technology.  The first is about user-driven menu generation over computer systems or Web-based systems.  The second is about dynamic generation of target files from template files over computer systems.

Professional Memberships

Prior to Lawrence Technological University, Dr. Chang published or presented over 75 papers, IT industry white papers, and management or technical articles.

Recent Publications and Presentations

• "Elements of Methods of Problem Solving and the Resource Capability in Software Engineering," co-authored with Michael Blaha, Proceeding of IEEE R4 EIT 2009 Conference pp. 84-89.  University of Windsor, Windsor Canada, June 2009.
• "Patterns for Object Class Models and XML Documents," Proceeding of the VIPSI-2008 Genoa Conerence at Genoa, Italy, July, 2008
• "Elements of Methods of Problem Solving and Modeling of IT Value," Proceeding of the VIPSI-2008 Pisa Conference at Pisa, Italy, July, 2008
• "Research Methodolgy- Life Cycle of a Dissertation Project in Information Systems and Methods of Problems Solving," Proceeding of IMSCI/EISTA 2008 Conference at Orlando, Florida, Volume 3, pp. 40-46 June-July, 2008
• “How to Solve It – Elements of Methods of Problem Solving,” Proceeding of the VIPSI-2007 Tokyo Conference at Tokyo, Japan, June, 2007
• “How to Solve It – Advice to Software Engineer and Information Engineer,” co-authored with Michael Blaha, Proceeding of the VIPSI-2006 Venice Conference at Venice, Italy, October 2006
• “On a Secured Object Signature for Web and XML Objects,” The IPSI Bgd Transactions on Internet Research, vol. 2, 1, pp. 3-8, Jan. 2006
• “A Software Tool That Analyzes Word Patterns From Shakespeare's Plays to Technical Articles,” Lilly West Conference on College and University Teaching,” Pomona, California, March 2006
• “A Software Engineering Process on Group Collaboration of Software Project Documents," Proceeding of the IASTED conference on "Advances in Computer Science and Technology"(ACST 2006) at Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, January 2006
• “"A Software Process that Accelerates the Comprehension of Web-based Technical Articles" Proceeding of the IASTED conference on "Web-based Education"(WBE 2006) at Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, January 2006
• “On a Secured Object Signature for Web and XML Objects,” Proceeding of the ISPI-USA Conference at Cambridge, MA, July 2005
• “An Introduction to Object Class Group,” Object Management Group (OMG) Conference on MDA/IDE at Orlando, Florida, March 2005
• “Data Collection and Data Analysis for Distance Learning,” Lilly West Conference on College and University Teaching,” Pomona, California, March 2005
• “A Unit Test Architecture that Traces Variables of JavaScript Programming,” Proceeding of IEEE R4 EIT 2004 Conference at Milwaukee School of Engineering, August 2004.
• "A Database Model for Distance Learning of Foreign Languages," Diversity 2004 Conference at UCLA, July 2004. 
• “A Web Based Tool for Distance Learning of Foreign Languages,” Technology and Society, 2004.  ISTAS '04. International Symposium on 17-19 June 2004, 85 – 91 (2004).
• “Methods of Reverse Engineering and Data Transformation in Determining the Multiplicities of Associations in Object-Oriented Modeling for Database Applications,” Proceeding of IEEE R4 EIT 2004 Conference at Milwaukee School of Engineering, August 2004.
• “A Workbook Method in Determining the Multiplicities of Associations in Object-Oriented Analysis and Modeling,” Proceeding of ASEE/NCS 2004 Spring Conference, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, April 2004.
• “An Architecture for Securing Web Objects,” Proceeding of ASEE/NCS 2004 Conference, Western Michigan University at Kalmazoo, MI, April 2004.
• “A Web Based Software Tool that Assists the Learning of a New Language,” presented in the Third International Conference on Diversity in Organizations at University of Hawaii, February 2003.
• “A Platform Independent Middleware Architecture for Accessing Databases on a Database Server on the Web,” presented in the IEEE R4 Electro and Information Technology Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 2003.
• "Using Text Menu to Develop or Prototype Web-Base Database Application", Detroit Oracle Users Group Conference at Livonia, MI, October 2003.