Robert France

Robert Bertrand France (October 8, 1960 – February 15, 2015) was a Jamaica-born American computer scientist.

Robert B. France was born in Jamaica on October 8, 1960, the eldest son of Robert W. and Jeanette France. He then attended Massey University in New Zealand funded by a Commonwealth Scholarship, where he achieved a PhD degree in computer science in 1990. During the same year, he married Sheriffa R. Soleyn in Saint Vincent. They emigrated to the United States together and in due course moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.

During 1990–92, France was a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland. From 1992 to 1997, he was an assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), becoming tenured in 1997–98. France was then appointed an associate professor from 1998 until 2004 and then full professor at Colorado State University within the department of computer science.

In 2008, Robert France and his co-authors Andy Evans, Kevin Lano, and Bernhard Rumpe, were awarded the Ten Year Most Influential Paper Award at the MODELS 2008 Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems for the 1998 paper "The UML as a Formal Modeling Notation". In 2013, France was awarded a five-year International Chair at INRIA in France. He had a son and daughter with his wife, Sheriffa.

Selected publications