Current projects include exploration of 'Data Governance Issues and Opportunities for SMEs' and 'Use of Big Data to support early identification of Students at Risk’ and development of a ‘Database Systems Lifecycle for the Digital Age’. Currently supervising honours level projects on ‘Smart Agriculture’, ‘Benchmarking NoSQL Databases’ and ‘Application of Machine Learning for Portfolio Optimisation’.

I am a Lecturer in Databases in the School of Engineering and Computing at University of the West Scotland (UWS), Paisley, Scotland where I am a member of Database and Knowledge Management Research Group.  I have worked as a lecturer at UWS since September 1991 and during this time I have developed and delivered classes, written international textbooks, published conference papers and supervised many Honours, MSc and PhD students with projects in a range of areas in the domain of databases.  

My research interests are in all aspects of data management/governance.  I am particularly interested in exploring the the issues and opportunities associated with the data created by smart technologies and applications.

Over the past few years, I have supported various research projects (involving undergraduate and postgraduate students) such as gamification of business Intelligence tools (resulting in 2 conference papers, an Honours student achieving 1^st Class and completion of the PhD studies - viva 0n 13^th May 2017) and simple social commerce (resulting in 1 conference paper and an honours student achieving 1st Class).  I am co-author of two widely-read textbooks called Database Solutions (2^nd Edition) and Database Systems: Design, Implementation and Management (6^th Edition) published by Addison Wesley. Visit my Google Scholar and Research Gate profiles. 

• Meeting the requirements for Data Science projects
• Appreciating the issues and opportunities for Business intelligence/Data Analytics projects

I would like to collaborate with the following:

• Local Councils and third sector organisations 
• The Data Lab

I would like to collaborate with national and international companies with in following domain (but not limited):

• Data (governance) management
• Data analytics technologies and applications
• Smart (data) applications (smart city – healthcare, smart farming – crop and livestock management, smart education - students at risk)

• Relational Database Design

My expertise is in techniques for capturing data requirements and translating this into database design for online transaction processing (OLTP) systems.

• Analytical Database Design

My expertise is in techniques for capturing analytical requirements and translating this into database design for data warehousing systems.

• Data Management

My expertise is in my wide knowledge of the issues, techniques and technologies required to manage data. This is a demanding area – as the nature and volume of data is changing (i.e. Big Data) and the traditional approaches and technologies that were once capable of meeting the needs are being challenged.

Research project (Main) (Database and Knowledge Management Research Group) : To continue to develop and validate approaches to management of Big (Live) Data. To investigate how internet and database technologies can be used together to reduce the amount of data duplication and data movement over the internet while still ensuring that data remains accessible and up-to-date for remote users.

Other research project (Database and Knowledge Management Research Group) : To investigate the impact of smart technologies on data management and to examine the opportunities that exist to exploit this growing source of data for the benefit of society. For example, to explore the use of Big Data to identify factors affecting Student Success.

My personal research project: To develop and validate a 21^st Century database development lifecycle that is fit for modern day data management. This lifecycle will guide the selection of appropriate techniques and support the creation of the required design documentation and finally enable an organisation to appreciate the issues (e.g. 3Vs of Big Data, integrity, privacy, security) and choices that are available in terms of meeting all their data capture, storage and usage needs.