VCU Professor Receives Prestigious Stevens Award

By Tom Gresham

Peter Aiken, associate professor of information systems at Virginia Commonwealth University, CEO and founding director of Data Blueprint and president of DAMA International, received the 2010 International Stevens Award on Oct. 13 at the 17th Annual Working Conference on Reverse Engineering in Beverly, Mass.

Aiken, who teaches in the VCU School of Business, received the award in recognition of his "evangelism of data reverse engineering and data-focused software development techniques and methods." The Stevens Award is given annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to the literature or practice of methods for software and systems development.

Aiken delivered the Stevens Award Lecture as the keynote speaker at the conference. His talk, “The Starting Point isn’t the Beginning: How Data Reengineering Changes IT,” highlighted three important ways his research has contributed to the IT profession:

• How applying formalized data reverse engineering can contribute in numerous ways to legacy systems reengineering/modernization.
• How the application of Carnegie Mellon’s SEI-CMM model could be used to objectively determine the maturity of organizational data management practices.
• How these formal methods and measures can be used to reduce organizational IT project risk.

In 25 years of business and information technology work, Aiken has held leadership positions with the United States Department of Defense and consulted with more than 50 organizations in 20 countries across a number of industries, including defense, banking, healthcare, telecommunications and manufacturing. He is the author of seven books on information technology and his articles have appeared in publications that include Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer, IEEE Software, the IBM Systems Journal and Information Week, among others.

Aiken founded Data Blueprint, a Richmond-based data management and IT consulting firm, in 1999.  The firm, which is partially owned by VCU, focuses on improving organizational data and data management practices. Data Blueprint clients include Walmart, Merck and Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, Nokia and six of the world’s 10 largest banks, among others.