Title of position statement: Smart is not enough: Cyber-physical systems and the way we engineer them must become smarter!

Abstract: Dependable and trustworthy software systems are vital for our society and this will only increase. However, engineering modern software systems is complex as they have to operate in uncertain and continuously changing environments. This talk argues that both systems and the way we engineer them must become smarter. With “smarter" we mean that systems adapt and learn through a perpetual and enduring process that continuously improves their capabilities to deal with the uncertainties and change they face across their lifetime. We highlight key areas in this area: cyber-physical systems, self-adaptation, data-driven technologies, and visual analytics, and outline key challenges in each of the areas, setting a research agenda for the years to come.

Short CV: Danny Weyns is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is also part-time affiliated with Linnaeus University Sweden. His main research interests are in software engineering of self-adaptive systems. He studies how design models and verification techniques can be exploited at runtime to provide assurances for the required adaptation goals, relying on principles from software architecture-based and control theory. His particular interest is in decentralized systems, where adaptation needs to be realized by multiple feedback loops. Danny received a PhD from for the KU Leuven in 2006 for work on multiagent systems and software architecture. Wiley recently published his book “Introduction to Self-Adaptive Systems: A Contemporary Software Engineering Perspective.

Title of position statement: Functional Design of Smart Systems: A Scenario-based Approach

Abstract: As a significant system development activity, functional design is responsible for analyzing customer needs, developing the functional architecture, and generating possible solution concepts for a system under development. Although lots of researchers have proposed many functional design approaches, most of the existing approaches are not suitable for the functional design of smart systems. One main reason lies in that the existing functional design approaches are primarily focused on assisting designers in generating solution principles for desired functions, which, however, do not properly take into consideration the interactions between a smart system under development, human users and external systems in the environment, and the complex functional logic of the system, resulting in that they cannot effectively support designers in the functional design of smart systems. To address the above issues, a scenario-integrated approach for functional design of smart systems is proposed based on the concept of scenario in software engineering, which explicitly elaborates how to employ scenarios to express ambiguous customer needs and how to generate the functional architectures and the corresponding solutions concepts through a structured process. The functional design of the automated doors-unlocking system of a smart vehicle is employed to illustrate the proposed approach and demonstrate its suitability.

Short CV: Yong Chen is a Professor of Systems Engineering and Design Science in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his bachelor and PhD degrees from Zhejiang University. He joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University as a postdoc in 2004. He was a visiting scholar in the IMPACT Laboratory at University of Southern California. Dr. Chen’s research interests include many aspects of systems engineering and design science research, in particular, requirements analysis, conceptual design, functional modeling, design innovation, design knowledge reuse, computer-aided design.

Title of position statement: Fun Leading to Fundamentals

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence is currently a focal point of interest in the research and development of innovative smart systems. The presentation will focus on the area of smart systems and in so doing highlight important fundamentals. In particular, the use of agent technology to enable the realization of smart systems will be considered. Symbiotic, holonic and immunological agents will be discussed and compared as enablers for facilitating intelligence in modern-day smart systems. Furthermore, a number of research projects will be presented in which biologically inspired agency and, in particular, immunological agency (inspired by the human immune system), were utilized to realize intelligence in smart systems. The presentation will concentrate on projects leading to intelligent computer games and indicate how the research leads to fundamental characteristics of smart systems.

Short CV: Prof Ehlers started her research career in the discipline of formal languages and automata theory. Prof Ehlers holds a PhD. in Computer Science awarded by the former Rand Afrikaans University with a thesis titled: A Hierarchy of Random Grammars and Automata. Currently her main research interests are agent architectures and interesting applications there-of. This includes multi-agent systems, Artificial Intelligence and specifically AI applications. She has been full professor in the Academy of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Johannesburg since 1992. She was appointed Head of Department of the Academy of Computer Science and Software Engineering in 2007.

Title of position statement: Integrating Data Science and Cyber Security with Applications in Internet of Transportation and Infrastructures

Abstract: Data Science and Security are being integrated to solve many of the security and privacy challenges. For example, machine learning techniques are being applied to solve security problems such as insider threat detection. Furthermore, the machine learning techniques are being adapted to handle adversarial attacks. In addition, privacy of the individuals is also being violated through these machine learning techniques as it is now possible to gather and analyze vast amounts of data. With the advent of the web, it is now possible to collect, store, manage, and analyze vast amounts of sensor data emanating from numerous devices and sensors including from various transportation systems. Such systems collectively are known as the Internet of Transportation Systems. However, security and privacy for the Internet of Transportation and the infrastructures that support it is a challenge. Due to the large volumes of heterogeneous data being collected from numerous devices, the traditional cyber security techniques such as encryption are not efficient to secure the Internet of Transportation. Some Physics-based solutions being developed are showing promise. The presentation will examine the developments on applying Data Science techniques for detecting cyber security problems such as insider threat detection as well as the advances in adversarial machine learning. Some developments on privacy aware and policy-based data management frameworks will also be discussed. Second it will discuss the developments on securing the Internet of Transportation and its supporting infrastructures and examine the privacy implications. Finally, it will describe ways in which Big Data, Data Science and Security could be incorporated into the Internet of Transportation and Infrastructures.

Short CV: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is the Founders Chair Professor of Computer Science and the Executive Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute at The University of Texas at Dallas and is also a visiting Senior Research Fellow at Kings College, University of London. Her 40-year career includes industry (Honeywell), federal research laboratory (MITRE), US government (NSF) and US academia. Her research interests are on integrating cyber security and artificial intelligence/data science for the past 35 years (formerly known as computer security and data management). The depth and breadth of her research are reflected in her being elected a Fellow of multiple prestigious STEM organizations including a Fellow of the ACM (Computing), IEEE (Engineering), AAAS (Science), NAI (Technology Innovation), the British-based IMA (Mathematics), SDPS (Transdisciplinary Research), and IRI (Data Science). She has received several awards for her research including the IEEE CS 1997 Technical Achievement Award, ACM SIGSAC 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award, the IEEE ISI 2010 Research Leadership Award, the IBM 2013 Faculty Award, the IEEE CS Services Computing 2017 Research Innovation Award, the ACM CODASPY 2017 Lasting Research Award, the IEEE Comsoc Communications and Information Security 2019 Technical Recognition Award, the SDPS 2012 Gold medal for Transdisciplinary Research, the IEEE Data Mining Service Award, and the ACM SACMAT 10 Year Test of Time Awards for 2018 and 2019 (for papers published in 2008 and 2009). She co-chaired the Women in Cyber Security Conference (WiCyS) in 2016 and delivered the featured address at the 2018 Women in Data Science (WiDS) at Stanford University and also received the Dallas Business Journal 2017 Women in Technology Award. Her work has resulted in 130+ journal articles, 300+ conference papers, 170+ keynote and featured addresses, seven US patents, fifteen books as well as technology transfer of the research to commercial and operational systems. She received her PhD from the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, and the prestigious earned higher doctorate (D. Eng) from the University of Bristol, UK for her published research in secure data management.

Title of position statement: On the Role of Assumptions in Engineering Smart Systems

Abstract: Engineers necessarily make assumptions during design and implementation of complex systems. These assumptions often set the expectations of one component towards the environment and other components. Assumptions are typically seen as implicit weak points of the system: should they be violated at run time, the system is likely to fall short of its required performance and safety. Although some recent work makes the assumptions explicit, they are still seen as liabilities. This talk will take the opposite perspective and explore how engineering assumptions enable intelligent behaviour in systems -- and how their violations can be managed at design time and run time.

Short CV: Dr. Ivan Ruchkin is a postdoctoral researcher at the PRECISE center at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. degree in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. His research interests are in modeling, analysis, and verification of cyber-physical systems (CPS). In the recent past, Dr. Ruchkin developed logic-based methods and automated tools to combine heterogeneous models and analyses of CPS.

Title of position statement: What modeling approaches for cyber-physical systems? Ask the ontologist!

Abstract: We not only have many examples of existing cyber-physical systems (CPS), we also have many definitions of what CPS are. Unfortunately, these definitions point to quite different aspects, and this is never a good sign in science. CPS are characterized in different ways because what they are and how they should be understood is still unclear. There are some commonalities, though. Every discussion of CPS recognizes the special interaction that CPS require between the material and the information worlds. The novelty that this type of interaction brings is hard to pinpoint with traditional modeling methodologies. It might be that these modeling techniques reached their conceptual limits. If we look at this situation from the ontological perspective, we can identify the root of the problem. To move on successfully, we likely need (a) a new generation of engineers more sensitive to fine distinctions and (b) a new set of modeling and reasoning tools.

Short CV: Dr. Stefano Borgo studied mathematics and computer science, is head of the ISTC CNR unit in Trento (IT), and coordinator of the Laboratory for Applied Ontology, an interdisciplinary group specialized on information modeling. His research focuses on ontology for information systems, and on knowledge representation methodologies for industry, robotics, cyber-physical and socio-technical systems. His main interests are the theoretical and practical modeling of interaction processes across humans and technologies, and the relationships across features, behaviour and function. He co-authored the DOLCE ontology which has been exploited in a variety of domains including computer science, engineering design, manufacturing, robotics, medicine, urban planning, architecture, laboratory data modelling, and primate studies. Dr. Borgo is member of the Editorial Board of the Applied Ontology and of the Semantic Web Journal, serves in the Advisory Board of the International Association on Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) and is member of standardization ISO and IEEE working groups.