I started my PhD in the fall of 2010 under the supervision of Prof. Keith Hipel and Prof. D. Marc Kilgour. In 2012, I was the TA for a course taught by Prof. Keith Hipel called SYDE 533: Conflict Resolution. The only GMCR software available back then was GMCR II which had been developed in 1999. GMCR II was unreliable, especially in dealing with large conflicts as it used to crash and display error messages, and there was no alternative.

 

Oskar Petersons, a student in the class with exceptional coding abilities, approached me with a new code of the basic features for implementing GMCR. It started only as a code without any graphical user interface (GUI), and this sparked my vision to deliver a professional DSS.

 

I have always envisioned creating a new reliable software for GMCR as I had struggled with GMCR II from the time I took the conflict resolution course in 2010. I had a lot of ideas that could make the GMCR methodology accessible such as graph drawing, report generation, and an advanced GUI. Visual appeal has been an important element to me.

 

I was struggling with my research on Inverse GMCR as the methodology I proposed needed a computerized solution to generate results. I made a couple of attempts using Matlab with decent results, but there was always something missing. I discussed my research and vision with Oskar, and the journey began.

 

It has been an exciting two years and I would like to thank Oskar Petersons for his patience to all my demanding requests and all the phone calls, meetings, and discussions to perfect GMCR+. His persistent hard work in refining GMCR+ is highly commendable. Many thanks to my supervisors, Prof. Keith Hipel and Prof. D. Marc Kilgour for their continuous support, guidance, and encouragement to make GMCR+ a reality. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the Conflict Analysis Group (CAG) at the University of Waterloo for their valuable feedback.