Rate My Professor Frans Henskens

Frans Henskens is a Conjoint Professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He obtained his Bachelor of Mathematics in 1974, Diploma of Education (Mathematics) in 1975, Diploma of Computer Science with Merit in 1986, and PhD in Computer Science in 1991, all from the University of Newcastle. After eleven years as a secondary school teacher, he joined the University of Newcastle in 1988 as Senior Tutor in Computer Science, promoted to Lecturer in 1990. He then served as Lecturer at the University of Sydney from 1992, returning to Newcastle in 1995 as Lecturer in the Department of Management and Honorary Research Associate in Sydney's Basser Department of Computer Science. In 1998, he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Newcastle, promoted to Associate Professor in 2007, and led the Distributed Computing Research Group until retirement in 2017. He held administrative positions as Head of Department and Assistant Dean (IT), and was a Baden-Württemberg Visiting Scholar at the University of Ulm in 2002.

Henskens' research specializations include engineering flexible component-based software systems, distributed and grid computing, operating systems and computer forensics, bioinformatics, resilience and availability in database systems, persistent stores for bulk data storage and manipulation, and the use of distributed systems and mobile computing to study and influence health behaviour. Notable contributions encompass the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank and development of the QuON software system with Dr. David Paul and Dr. Mark Wallis, which supports data collection and dissemination in numerous medical research projects at the University of Newcastle and other institutions. Key publications are 'Agent-Oriented Smart Factory (AOSF): an MAS Based Framework for SMEs Under Industry 4.0' (2019), 'A Simple Model for Evaluating Medical Treatment Options' (2015), 'Engineering Flexible Service-Oriented Transactions' (2014), 'An Approximate Reasoning Model for Medical Diagnosis' (2013), and 'Peer-based complex profile management' (2011). He has supervised PhD students graduating from 1995 to 2020 and secured grants totaling over $11 million, mainly NHMRC-funded for schizophrenia research and e-health interventions. Awards include the University of Newcastle Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence and Australian College of Educators NSW Quality Teaching Award (2007), and Vice Chancellor's Award for Research Supervision Excellence (2015).