Mohammad's Questionnaire

1. your name:

Mohammad Al-Mutawa

2. the intended topic area for your PhD:

Currently Networking, but this may change as I'm still exploring.

3. most important reason for you personally to get a PhD

To make a difference through research and teaching

4. name three computer scientist which YOU consider most important for the field and what you consider their contribution

4.1. Alan Turing-sometimes called the father of modern computer science with his many contributions
4.2. John von Neumann-basic design of the modern computers (von Neumann architecture)
4.3. Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn-created the TCP/IP protocol, sometimes are called fathers of the Internet

5. name the three most important, professionally relevant books which you have read

5.1. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by Kurose and Ross
5.2. The Complete Reference C++ by Herbert Schildt
5.3. Perl Black Book by Steven Holzner

6. assuming you will collaborate with researchers and explore ideas outside of CS during your PhD studies — which domains are the most likely candidates for this effort

6.1. Computer Engineering
6.2. Electrical Engineering
6.3.

7. briefly characterize your own digital literacy:

7.1. which programming language do you know (mention them in an order of decreasing familiarity)

C/C++, Perl, Java, Python, VBscript

7.2. describe the top three projects (problem, programming language used, for what) which you have done in the past

Actually as a network administrator, most of my big projects did not involve programming, they were mostly designing and implementing networks which involves configuring network devices (switches, routers, firewalls proxy servers)
one project which I did that involved programming was creating an inventory system, I basically created a web interface and linked it to a Database. I used apache web server, Perl programming language and Mysql as the database. The one neat thing about inventory system was the search, through the web interface users were able to easily search by any combination attributes

7.3. which are the top three applications that you are familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver, iMovie, ….)?

Actually I'm not an expert in any application but I know a little: 3D Max, Flash, photoshop and of course Microsoft applications Word, Excel, Access, visio, ...

8. List your three favorite topics that you would like to see discussed in this course!

8.1. How to become a successful PHD student (in computer science)
8.2. How to become part of the research community
8.3. How to build strong relationships with professors and other students during my PHD

Last modified 3 September 2007 at 8:51 pm by mohammad