AdaCore, provider of the highest quality Ada tools and support, today announced the appointment of Ada expert Stephen Baird to the companys GNAT Pro implementation team. In this role, he will participate in the development and enhancement of the GNAT Pro technology, and provide expert support for AdaCore customers.

Mr. Baird has been involved with the Ada language and its implementation since 1981, and is an active member of the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 Ada Rapporteur Group (the “ARG”). The ARG decides technical issues relating to the maintenance and development of the Ada language. As an ARG member, Mr. Baird has made valuable contributions to the latest language version, Ada 2005.

“Stephen Baird is one of the most experienced experts in the Ada field,” said Robert Dewar, President and CEO of AdaCore. “He will add to the strength of our outstanding team here at AdaCore, by providing both language expertise and compile system development experience.”

Mr. Baird began his career in 1981 working on the specification of the instruction set of Rationals R1000 machine architecture, which was designed to specifically support the original Ada language and Rationals software development environment. He helped write the specialized microcode that implemented this instruction set, and he also worked on the R1000 code generator.

When Rational moved away from proprietary hardware, and Rational Apex was offered on general-purpose hosts, Mr. Baird took responsibility for the compiler components that enforce the so-called “static semantics” of the language (enforcing type checking, etc.). Mr. Baird implemented the upgrade of these components for the Ada 95 version of the language.

Most recently, Mr. Baird worked for IBM, which acquired Rational in 2003. As Senior Software Engineer, he was responsible for adapting the Ada 95 “middle pass” portion of the Rational Ada compiler to implement the dynamic semantics of Ada 2005.

Mr. Baird holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

About AdaCore

Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, Security, and reliability are critical. AdaCores flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, Military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com