Orlena (Olly) Gotel is an Independent Researcher based in New York City. Olly has been active in the area of Requirements Engineering for the past 20 years and holds a PhD on the Systems Engineering topic of Traceability. In addition to academic research and teaching positions in the UK and US (Oxford, Imperial, City, UCL, Pace), Olly has held senior positions within the UK defense industry doing Systems Requirements Engineering, and strives to bridge the gap between research and practice through organizing the professional programs of the New York City Software Process Improvement Network and by involvement with other conference/workshop events. Olly was the co-author of the most influential paper over a 10-year period from the 1st Conference on Requirements Engineering held in 1994. Since those early days, Olly has been trying very hard to make this dry discipline more visual and better fun. She is currently working on a number of longer-term research and writing projects in this area.

How to explain this area in everyday terms? Read what kayaking has got to do with software and requirements engineering:
-- Requirements Quarterly 53, January 2010, pp7-13 (Part I)
-- Requirements Quarterly 54, April 2010, pp6-11 (Part II)

Coming up: RE'11 and MERE'11 -- should there be a re-match of Requirements Engineering's Next Top Model?

MORE: Olly's writings, professional stuff and kayaking resources