Mark Staples is a Research Group Manager at NICTA. His current areas of research are related to configuration management, product line development, and software process improvement. He completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and prior to joining NICTA, Mark spent four years with software development organisations in Brisbane, Australia, working in verification, configuration management, and process management roles.  He worked on the development of safety-critical embedded systems for industrial automation in the transportation industry, and also on enterprise infrastructure for electronic payments over the Internet. Mark maintains a blog where he ruminates on software, technology and beer.