Ao. Univ.Prof. Dr. Stefan Biffl

stefan_portrait

Stefan.Biffl (at) tuwien.ac.at
Web: http://qse.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/
Telefon: +43-(0)1-588 01 – 188 10
Fax: +43-(0)1-588 01 – 188 99
By appointment via e-mail
Office Location: Favoritenstr. 9-11, 2nd floor, room HC0205

Street address:
Software Engineering Group
Technische Universität Wien
Favoritenstr. 9/194-1, A-1040 Wien Austria

I am an Associate Professor of Software Engineering at the Institute of Information Systems Engineering, Technische Universität Wien. I received MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the Vienna University of Technology and an MS degree in social and economic sciences from the University of Vienna. In 2001 I received an Erwin-Schrödinger research scholarship and spent one year as researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute of Experimental Software Engineering (headed by Dieter Rombach), focusing on quality management and empirical software engineering. Also, in 2001 I received the Habilitation degree (Venia Docendi) in Praktische Informatik for work on empirical software engineering in project management and quality management. In 2006 I worked as guest researcher at Czech Technical University, Department of Cybernetics (headed by Vladimir Marik).

I have served as guest editor on journals for software technology and quality. I has been involved in organizing and program committees for international software engineering conferences, including ECSA, ICSA, SPLC, SEAA, ESEM, EASE, ESEC/FSE, and ICSE; quality and process improvement conferences, including ICSSP and EurSPI; and software-intensive systems engineering conferences, including IECON, ETFA, IFAC, and INDIN. I have served as a reviewer on international software engineering journals, including TSE, TOSEM, JSS, and IST; software-intensive systems and knowledge engineering journals, including TII, IJSEKE, and TKDE; and on grant committees of the ERC and the Swiss National Foundation.

I have headed basic and applied research projects on engineering software-intensive systems with public funding for over 4 Mill. Euro, including the 7-year Christian Doppler research laboratory Software Engineering Integration for Flexible Automation Systems.

My research interests include

  • Software and Systems Engineering Process Improvement
  • Multi-view Model Quality Analysis and Improvement
  • Value-based Software Engineering
  • Empirical Software Engineering
  • Collaboration in Software and Systems Engineering
  • Software Architecture, in particular, Collective Intelligence Systems
  • Performance-Driven Knowledge Engineering for Software-Intensive Systems
  • Engineering of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (Industry 4.0)
  • Production automation systems simulation and test
  • Application focus: systems for monitoring and coordination of engineering heterogeneous software-intensive systems.

Recent Research Project Experience

  • Supervisor in the TU Wien Doctoral College Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems since 2024.
  • Module lead in the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Security and Quality Improvement in the Production System Lifecycle since 2023.
  • Senior domain expert and advisor for the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Security and Quality Improvement in the Production System Lifecycle since 2018.
  • Principal researcher in the TU Wien Doctoral College Cyber-Physical Production Systems from 2015 to 2017.
  • Key researcher at the competence center Secure Business Austria since 2012.
  • Head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Software Engineering Integration for Flexible Automation from 2010 to 2016 with 4+Mill. Euro funding. In the CD Laboratory 10+ researchers worked for 7 years on application-oriented basic research for software and systems engineering environment integration with industry partners in the automation engineering domain.
  • Principal researcher in the Complex Systems Design and Engineering Laboratory, 2008 to 2009.
  • Principal researcher at TUW in several nationally funded research projects (FWF, FFG) and an EU Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge project.
  • Guest researcher at the Czech Technical Universty in Prague, Department of Cybernetics (2006) on software process design for automation systems engineering, agentAgent-based simulation of production automation systems, and software test automation for production systems.
  • Guest researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Empirical Software Engineering (IESE), Germany, on software defect detection methods and defect prediction models (2001).

Publishing

I have co-authored more than 200 publications in the areas of software engineering, quality improvement, and software architecture. I was lead editor for the book Value-Based Software Engineering (Springer, September 2005) in collaboration with my co-editors A. Aurum, B.W. Boehm, H. Erdogmus, and P. Grünbacher.
In 2010, I co-authored the book Best Practice Software Engineering with A. Schatten, M. Demolsky, E. Gostischa-Franta, T. Östreicher, and Winkler D. (Spektrum Akademischer Verlag).
In 2016, I co-authored the book Semantic Web Technologies for Intelligent Engineering Applications with M. Sabou (Springer Verlag). In 2017, I co-authored the book Multi-Disciplinary Engineering for Cyber-Physical Production Systems with A. Lüder and D. Gerhard (Springer Verlag). In 2019, I co-authored the book Security and Quality in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering with A. Lüder, M. Eckhart, and E. Weippl (Springer Verlag).

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Awards and Shortlists

  • Shortlist for Best Paper Award – Semantics 2016
    F.J. Ekaputra, M. Sabou, E. Serral, and S. Biffl, “Knowledge Change Management and Analysis during the Engineering of Cyber Physical Production Systems”. in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Semantic Systems – SEMANTiCS 2016.
  • Best Paper Award – IEEE ETFA 2015 L. Berardinelli, S. Biffl, E. Mätzler, T. Mayerhofer, M. Wimmer: “Model-Based Co-Evolution of Production Systems and their Libraries with AutomationML”; in: “Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2015)”, IEEE 2015.
  • Shortlist for Best Paper Award – Semantics 2014 Andreas Grünwald, Dietmar Winkler, Marta Sabou, Stefan Biffl, “The Semantic Model Editor: Efficient Data Modeling and Integration based on OWL Ontologies”; Proceedings of the 10th International Semantic Systems (SEMANTIC), ACM, 2014.
  • Best Paper Award – I-Semantics and I-Know conferences 2013 Fajar Ekaputra, Estefania Serral, Dietmar Winkler, Stefan Biffl, “An analysis framework for ontology querying tools”, In: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Semantic Systems (I-SEMANTICS) in conjunction with the 13h International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies (I-KNOW), ACM, 2013.
  • Best Paper Award – atp award 2012 Stefan Biffl, Richard Mordinyi, Thomas Moser, “Requirements Analysis for Integrated Engineering – Mechanisms and Practical Demands”; atp edition 55 (4), pp 28-35, 2012.
  • Outstanding Service Award – IFIP 2009 by the Int. Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Technical Committee on Software: Theory and Practice, in 2009.
  • Best Paper Award – IndIn 2008 Arndt Lüder, Lorenz Hundt, Stefan Biffl, “On the Suitability of Modeling Approaches For Engineering Distributed Control Systems”; at the IEEE Industrial Informatics (IndIn) Conference, 2009.
  • Best Paper Award – EASE 2008 Stefan Biffl, Muhammad Ali Babar, Dietmar Winkler, “Impact of Experience and Team Size on the Quality of Scenarios for Architecture Evaluation” at the 12th Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE), Bari, Italy, 2008.
  • Short list for Best Paper Award – IEEM 2008 Munir Merdan, Thomas Moser, Dindin Wahyudin, Stefan Biffl, “Performance Evaluation of Workflow Scheduling Strategies Considering Transportation Times and Conveyor Failures” at the IEEE Int. Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), Singapore, 2008.

Involvement in the Research Community

Being a researcher means to be involved in activities that advance science and research and help transfer the state-of-the-art into practice. I contribute with the following activities. I am currently involved in the organization of following scientific events:

  • Co-chair of the Software Product and Process Improvement (SPPI) Track at the Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) 2024.

I have been involved in the organization and program committees of the following academic events:

  • Program Co-chair of the Research Track at the European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) 2021 in Vasjo, Sweden.
  • Program Committee member of the Working Conference on Variability Modeling of Software-Intensive Systems (VaMoS) 2021.
  • Program Committee member of the Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SofSem) 2021.
  • Program Chair of the Track Software Engineering: Methods, Applications, and Tools (SEMAT) at the 44th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SofSem) 2018 in Krems, Austria.
  • Program Co-chair of the Full Paper Track at the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) 2017 in Toronto.
  • Steering Committee member of the Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) since 2014.
  • Scientifc Program Chair of the Software Quality Days conference 2012 to 2019.
  • Co-Chair of the special session on Mechatronical Engineering at the IEEE Int. Conf. on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA) 2012 conference.
  • Guest editor of the special issue of best papers at the Software Quality Days 2011 conference at the Software Quality Journal.
  • Guest editor of the special issue of best papers at the SEAA 2011 conference at the journal Information and Software Technology.
  • Program Chair of the Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) 2011 in Oulu, Finland.
  • Co-chair of “Software Engineering for Distributed Systems” Track at the International Conference on Complex, Intelligent, and Software-Intensive Systems (CISIS) 2010 in Krakow, Poland.
  • Co-chair of the “Software Product and Process Improvement” (SPPI) Track at Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) 2003 to 2006 and 2008 to 2010 and since 2012.
  • Program Committee member of the Int. Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) 2020.
  • Program Committee member of the Int. ACM/IEEE Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) since 2020.
  • Program Committee member of the Int. Federation on Automatic Control (IFAC) World Congress 2020.
  • Program Committee member of the International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (Profes) 2020.
  • Program Committee member of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA) conference since 2020.
  • Program Committee member of The International Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering (XP) 2020.
  • Program Committee member of the Int. Conf. on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE) 2018.
  • Program Committee member of the IEEE Industrial Informatics Conference (IndIn) 2016.
  • Program Committee member of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2016.
  • Program Committee member of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Software Product Lines (SPLC) 2015.
  • Program Committee member of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE) 2014.
  • Co-chair of the special session on “Mechatronical Engineering” at the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Conf. (IECON) 2013.
  • Program Committee member of the International Doctoral Symposium of the Profes Conference (IdoProfes) 2013.
  • Program Committee member of the International Conference on Software and Systems Process (ICSSP) 2012.
  • Program Committee member of the European Conference on Software Process Improvement (EuroSPI) 2012.
  • Program Committee member of the Int. Conf. on Availability, Reliability, and Security (ARES) 2007.

I have acted as a reviewer for the following journals:

I have been international opponent at PhD defenses on topics including Software Engineering, empirical software engineering, and industrial production systems engineering. I have been a member of the scientific advisory boards of:

  • EU FP7 project Medeia: “Model-Driven Embedded Systems Design Environment for the Industrial Automation Sector”; http://www.medeia.eu
  • FFG research project Frontics: “Communication Framework for Networked Automation and Control Systems”; http://frontics.org
  • Secure Business Austria, Comet 2 Competence Center.
  • Software Competence Center Hagenberg (SCCH); Austria.

Scientific community service

I am a member scientific and professional societies: