8th of May at 16h00, Fatima Mattiello will give a presentation entitled“Space system engineering challenges and research contributions to the ADVANCE project”
Bio Fatima Mattiello has a PhD in Electronics and Computer Engineering – ITA, Master Science in Electronics and Telecommunication – INPE, and Bachelor in Computer Science – ICMC/USP. Space system engineer at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), with more than 25-years experience in space projects – small satellites and Cubesat-based nanosatellites. Docent at INPE´s Graduate Program in Space Engineering and Technology, her research topics of interest are model-based system engineering, verification, validation and testing of software-intensive space systems and concept of operation of space systems. Head of INPE´s Teaching, Research and Capacity Building Coordination (COEPE). Currently, senior researcher on mission at University of Coimbra for the ADVANCE (Addressing Verification and Validation Challenges in Future Cyber-Physical Systems) project, EU-call H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018.
24th of April at 16h00, José D’Abruzzo Pereira will give a presentation entitled“A Model-Driven Approach for the Management and Enforcement of Coding Conventions”
Bio José D’Abruzzo Pereira holds a Ph.D. in Informatics Engineering from the University of Coimbra (UC), is currently an Invited Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, and a member of the Software and System Engineering (SSE) group at CISUC. His research interests include security and vulnerability detection, static code analysis, software project management, databases, software quality, and self-adaptive systems. He received a MSc in Information Technology and Software Engineering from the University of Coimbra and Carnegie Mellon University and a BSc. in Computer Science from the State University of Campinas – Brazil (Unicamp). He is also acting as a professor in the Specialization in Software Engineering at the State University of Campinas – Brazil (Unicamp).
Abstract Coding conventions are a means to improve the reliability of software systems, and they are especially useful to avoid the introduction of known bugs or security flaws. However, coding rules typically come in the form of text written in natural language, which makes them hard to manage and to enforce. Furthermore, relevant rules may depend from the context in which a certain software is deployed, and they may also evolve over time following the discovery of new vulnerabilities or the introduction of new language features. In this talk, we present an approach for the management and enforcement of coding conventions using structured models. We define the Coding Conventions Specification Language (CCSL), a language to define coding rules as structured specifications, from which checkers are derived automatically by code generation. To evaluate our approach, we run a thorough experiment on 8 real open-source projects and 77 coding rules for the Java language, comparing the violations identified by our checkers with those reported by the PMD static analysis tool. The obtained results are promising and confirm the feasibility of the approach. The experiment also revealed that textual coding rules rarely document all the necessary information to write a reliable checker.
12th of April at 16h00, Patrizio Pelliccione will give an extra presentation entitled“Democratizing the use of robots” Location: G4.1
Bio Patrizio Pelliccione is a Professor in Computer Science at Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI, Italy). Patrizio is also adjunct professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. His research topics are mainly in software engineering, software architecture modeling and verification, autonomous systems, and formal methods. He received his PhD in computer science from the University of L’Aquila (Italy). Thereafter, he worked as a senior researcher at the University of Luxembourg in Luxembourg, then assistant professor at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, then Associate Professor at both Chalmers | University of Gothenburg in Sweden and University of L’Aquila.He has been on the organization and program committees for several top conferences and he is a reviewer for top journals in the software engineering domain. He is very active in European and National projects. In his research activity, he has collaborated with several companies. More information is available at http://patriziopelliccione.com.
Abstract Autonomous systems and robots promise to facilitate a myriad of tasks of everyday life. Software engineering is called to play a key role in making robotic research pervasive and ubiquitous and in democratizing the use of robots in everyday-life scenarios. There is the need of rethinking the development processes, as well as the architecting, designing and integration of robotic software. In this talk, I will describe our experience in making robots accessible to people with expertise neither in ICT nor in robotics. Specifically, I will describe our solutions to enable the specification of complex missions for multi-robots in a user-friendly but still accurate and unambiguous way. I will close the talk with a view of future research and development directions.
10th of April at 16h00, Omid Asghari and Jiawei Wang will give two short presentations, to promote discussion on two relevant ongoing or disruptive topics. Afterwards, there will be a social gathering where everyone can talk freely on whatever subjects they like. Location: G4.1
Omid Asghari – “Sensitivity Analysis of Safety Metrics for Monitoring UAV Operations in U-Space” Bio Omid is a third-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Coimbra. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering – Software from the University of Kurdistan and his master’s degree from the Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch in Tehran. During his master’s program, he gained practical experience in the industry as a software developer and application security specialist for six years. Omid’s research interests primarily focus on U-Space safety assessment and the integration of analytical safety assessments with experimentation. Abstract In recent years, UAVs have increasingly been utilized in urban environments due to their agility in movement, mechanical simplicity, affordability, and capacity to access locations that are challenging or impossible for humans to reach. With a significant number of drones expected to operate in urban airspace soon, enhancing safety through monitoring drone operations in U-space is essential. To achieve this monitoring, several safety metrics need to be calculated as measurement units.The goal of this research is to monitor drone operations in U-space and calculate UAV operation risks by conducting sensitivity analyses on various safety metrics. This involves assessing the impact of different parameters on these metrics.
Jiawei Wang – “AI-based Safety-critical Components” Bio Jiawei Wang is a Ph.D. student at CISUC, University of Coimbra. She received her master’s degree in Software Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, China, in 2020, with a specialization in Machine Learning applied to perception tasks. Under the supervision of Prof. João Campos, her current research is centered on characterizing and improving safety of AI-based components by addressing biases between data in training and deployment phases. Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) has become indispensable in safety-critical applications because of its exceptional performance. However, the inherent “black-box” nature often leads to incidents resulting in loss of property and lives. While AI’s capability to autonomously learn from big data surpasses traditional algorithms, the quality of the dataset sets the upper limit on model performance. Dataset bias has remained a persistent challenge in machine learning (ML) since its start. Contemporary approaches such as data augmentation offer some mitigation against bias effects. While achieving comparable performance on data distinct from the training set remains challenging. In our work, we aim to enhance AI safety by identifying, transferring, and mitigating dataset-related biases. In particular, we will consider AI used in the perception components. Our preliminary results reveal there exist distinct dataset-related patterns across various image datasets for pedestrian classification task. Our next step is designing experiments to overcome the influence caused by dataset bias using the ideas from Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs).
13th of March at 15h30, Gloria-Cerasela Crişan (Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău, Romania) will give a presentation entitled “Heterogeneous transportation systems: truck-and-drone for efficient deliveries”. Afterwards, (with a short coffee break 🙂) Bruno Jesus and André Bento will give two short presentations, to promote discussion on two ongoing research topics.
Gloria-Cerasela Crişan – “Heterogeneous transportation systems: truck-and-drone for efficient deliveries”
NOTE: this speaker/presentation is made within the context of the ALGO Lab (Adaptive Computation group)
Bio Gloria Cerasela Crişan received the degree in informatics from the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1986, and the Ph.D. degree in informatics from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania, in 2008.,Since 2016, she has been an Associate Professor with the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău, Romania. Her research interests include combinatorial optimization problems, metaheuristics, transportation and logistics problems, and GIS.
Abstract Last-mile delivery (in fact, the last leg of the parcel journey) is generally estimated as having complex logistic aspects and important impact on customer satisfaction. Traditionally, getting a parcel from the last hub to the customer is done using a motor vehicle (car, truck, boat) or a bicycle. Drones (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – UAVs) do not need roads, and differentiate their service from the traditional transportation modes in multiple ways: light weight, small consumption, high speed, small capacity, short range, weather vulnerability (vs. heavy weight, high consumption, small speed, big capacity, wide range, weather resilience – for trucks, for example). Truck-and-drone cooperative transportation systems are used for about ten years, with major results in customer satisfaction, cost reduction and environmental impact (therefore at the individual, businesses, and societal levels). This presentation aims to describe some theoretical approaches and practical results of such mixed parcel delivery networks.
Bruno Jesus – “Security and Robustness of Gateways on IoT Systems” Bio PhD student at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra, currently a researcher in the Software and Systems Engineering group at the Center for Informatics and Systems (CISUC), where he conducts research related to IoT systems, security, and privacy. Holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from the Postgraduate Program at the Centro de Informática (CIn) of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (2010), with a research focus on RFID technology and anti-collision protocols. Graduated in Computer Science from the Universidade Federal de Alagoas (2006). Has teaching experience in the field of Computer Science, with emphasis on Introduction to Programming and Computer Networks, as well as in Distance Education. Holds a technical degree in informatics from the Instituto Federal de Alagoas (2004) with a specialization in Systems Analysis and Network Administration.
Abstract Internet-based systems are present in people’s daily lives, helping to perform various activities and providing greater comfort and ease in communication. In this context of diversification, every day more devices have access to the network, further increasing the reach and distribution of information worldwide. According to the Internet Society, “extending network connectivity and computing power to objects, devices, sensors, and other artifacts that are not normally considered computers” is called the Internet of Things (IoT). Some of the devices, in the IoT systems, are critical devices. In our work, we focus on gateways responsible for collecting and sending data from sensors to an application or the cloud. Because of this, they are the most vulnerable device to be attacked and need maximum security. In our work we intend to identify the main issues related to the robustness and security of integration frameworks used in IoT gateways, by testing the robustness of these components, creating a test case methodology, and performing many test cases for each endpoint. Finally, we will check the behavior of the frameworks in the presence of errors and problems with the data sent.
André Bento – “Towards Optimal Scaling of Cloud Services” Bio André Bento is a PhD student at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He received his MSc in 2019 from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, with a thesis on Observing and Controlling Performance in Microservices. His main research topics are anomaly detection, observability, and optimization of resources for cloud services. His research interests include cloud computing, microservices, monitoring, and other distributed systems topics.
Abstract Cloud services have become increasingly popular for developing large-scale applications due to the abundance of resources they offer. The scalability and accessibility of these resources have made it easier for organizations of all sizes to develop and implement sophisticated and demanding applications to meet demand instantly. As monetary fees are involved in the use of the cloud, one of the challenges for application developers and operators is to balance their budget constraints with crucial quality attributes, such as availability. Industry standards usually default to solutions that cannot simultaneously consider competing objectives. Our research addresses this challenge by proposing a Cost-Availability Aware Scaling (CAAS) approach that uses multi-objective optimization of availability and cost. We evaluate CAAS using two open-source microservices applications, yielding improved results compared to the industry standard CPU-based Autoscaler (AS). CAAS can find optimal system configurations with higher availability, between 1 and 2 nines on average, and reduced costs, 6% on average, with the first application, and 1 nine of availability on average, and reduced costs up to 18% on average, with the second application. The gap in the results between our model and the default AS suggests that operators can significantly improve the operation of their applications.
28th of February at 16h00, Helder Sousa will give a presentation entitled“Strengthening proximity between Academia and Industry” Location: G4.1
Bio Helder Sousa is a seasoned software engineer and leader with a background in Computer and Systems Engineering. He has extensive experience in Business Critical Enterprise Systems and has held various roles at Critical Software, including Project Engineer, Software Architect, Engineering Manager, and Product Manager for edgeBOX. He later founded and served as CTO of the Smart Technologies Solutions division at Critical Software, with extensive expertise on the UK’s Smart Metering Implementation Programme. Currently, he is on a sabbatical, working on an initiative to bridge the gap between academia and industry.
Abstract It is generally perceived in Portugal that the relationship between Universities and the Industry has a long way to reach full potential. This is the main premise for the initiative. Having had conversations with the key roles at Critical Software, DEI and CISUC, the premise held up and this initiative was welcomed and seen as valuable to all parts. The initiative will experiment and develop ways of increasing the potential of the relationship between Academia and Industry.For efficiency and focus the relationship between DEI/CISUC and CSW will be used as case study and main subject of interest. Conclusions and proposals for future shall be taken with a global perspective following the mindset ”Think Globally, Act Locally”.In this presentation I’ll go through the foundations of the initiative, the main developing areas and incite you to join and participate on this journey of proximity.
14th of February at 16h00, João Rafael Henriques and Rodrigo Machado will give two short presentations, to promote discussion on two relevant ongoing or disruptive topics. Afterwards, there will be a social gathering where everyone can talk freely on whatever subjects they like. Location: G4.1
João Rafael Henriques – “Automated Software Vulnerability Collection for a Database with Static Information” Bio My name is João Rafael Henriques and I am a master’s student in the Computer Engineering course in the Software Engineering field. I finished my degree last year, the same year I started working in the area of vulnerabilities. Since then I have been working on automating processes with the aim of maintaining an updated database with important information about vulnerabilities, allowing the obtained dataset to be useful for researchers and developers in the area. Abstract Software vulnerabilities are present in most software applications. They leave the applications prone to attacks, which can cause severe consequences e.g., damage to the operation, and unauthorized access), leading to legal and financial implications. There are techniques to detect such vulnerabilities, but they suffer from the same issues: reporting items that are not actual vulnerabilities or not detecting all of them. There are datasets to support the development of new vulnerability detection techniques. Nevertheless, their data are usually frozen and must be frequently updated with the newly disclosed vulnerabilities. Hence, we propose an automated solution to mine vulnerability and code repositories. An up-to-date database can support studies reflecting the most recent vulnerabilities and threats. To do that, we use a known vulnerability database with static information about open-source C/C++ projects (Linux Kernel, Mozilla, Xen, Apache httpd, and Glibc). Results show that the field responsible for identifying the project has more changes in the vulnerabilities from the database. Additional 3,882 vulnerabilities have been collected since the release of the database.
Rodrigo Machado – “Adversarial Techniques for the Evaluation And Improvement of Intrusion Detection Systems” Bio Rodrigo Machado received a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics Engineering in 2022 at the University of Coimbra. He now pursues a Master’s degree on the Intelligent Systems path. In his first year, and under advisory of Prof. João Campos, he researched how autocorrelation in sequential data might be leveraged for predicting system failures using Machine Learning.Now in his second-year, he is writing his dissertation under supervision of Prof. João Campos. Abstract Recent research into Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection Systems lead to the proposal of Machine Learning as a viable classification method in these systems, with some works delivering promising results.However, given the hostile environment where these systems operate, adversaries can aim to attack and bypass these IDSs, in order to harm the underlying system.This MSc. thesis aims to understand how sensitive the proposed classifiers are to Adversarial Machine Learning techniques, which an attacker could leverage to bypass a classifier trained in this task.
24th of January at 16h00, David Perez Abreu will give a presentation entitled“Towards zero-touch management in the Cloud-to-IoT continuum” Location: G4.1
Bio David Perez Abreu received his Ph.D. degree in Information Science and Technologies from the University of Coimbra in 2021. He has published several conference and journal papers and has actively participated in different national and international research projects. He is part of the program committee of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), IEEE International Workshop Smart Living and Communications for the Next Generations Networks (SLICO – WoWMoM), and IEEE International Conference on Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN). His research interests include Cloud-to-IoT continuum, softwarized networks, as well as zero-touch network and service management. He worked as a researcher in the Laboratory for Mobile and Wireless Networks at the Central University of Venezuela from 2006 until 2014. He is an invited assistant professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering at the University of Coimbra and a senior researcher at the Laboratory for Informatics and Systems at the Pedro Nunes Institute.
Abstract The distributed and heterogeneous nature of the Cloud-to-IoT continuum and other network infrastructures, such as 5G and 6G networks, have boosted the need for automation of network and service management operations. Early automation solutions rely on optimization models and heuristics that for current conditions are not enough. Different paradigms have recently appeared, such as Zero touch network & Service Management (ZSM), designed by the ETSI to automatically orchestrate and manage network resources while assuring QoS requested by users. ZSM seeks to provide a cost-effective solution to both users and operators of communication networks by incorporating intelligence and autonomous adaptivity into network management. The goals are achieving three main characteristics: (1) self-organization; (2) self-optimization; and (3) self-healing. Cognitive approaches can be used by management modules that gather knowledge based on current and past observations; thus, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can allow the collection, exchange, and usage of data to enhance the learning process, leading to a faster convergence, incurring in lower costs. This talk will present some perspectives based on early and more recent approaches to achieve automation for network and service management for the Cloud-to-IoT continuum.
10th of January at 16h00, André Almeida will give a presentation entitled“Middleware for Digital Twins: Current Research, Challenges and Opportunities” Location: G4.1
Bio Digital twins (DTs) are becoming a groundbreaking concept to support Industry 4.0, but their potential reaches various other domains, such as healthcare and smart cities. Several challenges arise to enable DTs, which require underlying middleware with advanced services to support the complexities of managing the virtual replicas of real-world entities. In this scenario, this talk aims to present which middleware strategies and technologies are used for DTs. We carried out a systematic mapping study that analyzed 13 primary studies on middleware for DTs. We shed light on the current state of the art and discuss research opportunities to evolve middleware to support DTs, especially regarding data management, integration, intelligence, management, and security.
Abstract Andre Almeida holds the position of senior lecturer at IFRN(Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil). He was Director of Information Technology Management at IFRN for six years, leading a team with more than one hundred collaborators across different departments. His current work is mainly on the following topics: Middleware Platforms with an emphasis on platform interoperability, Cloud Computing, and Digital Twins. He also works on several IT Projects, developing systems and platforms to improve management processes in public administration, in particular, to support evidence-based decision-making and the provision of digital public services.
13th of December at 16h00, Marco Vieira will give a presentation entitled“A Tale of Contributions to Dependability Benchmarking” Location: G4.1
Bio Marco Vieira is currently a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and at the University of Coimbra (currently under a leave of absence). His research interests include dependable computing, dependability and security assessment and benchmarking, software security, fault and vulnerability injection, failure prediction, static analysis andsoftware testing, subjects in which he authored or co-authored works in refereed conferences and journals. Marco is Chair of the IFIP WF 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Steering CommitteeVice-Chair of the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE International Symposium on Software ReliabilityEngineering, and member of the Steering Committee of the Latin America Dependable and Secure Computing Symposium. He served as Program Chair for the major conferences on the dependable computing area.
Abstract Once upon a time, in the realm of computing, there was a kingdom that faced a pressing need for dependable and reliable systems. The citizens of the kingdom relied on various technologies for their daily lives, from communication to commerce, and they yearned for a way to measure and ensure the dependability of these systems. In this kingdom, there lived a visionary computer scientist named Ocram. Ocram was deeply committed to advancing the field of dependable computing, and he recognized the crucial role that benchmarking could play in achieving this goal. Benchmarking, he believed, could provide a standardized way to assess the performance and dependability of different systems, guiding the kingdom’s engineers and decision-makers toward the most dependable solutions. Motivated by this vision, Ocram and his mentor Euqirneh, set out on a quest to establish a comprehensive framework for dependability benchmarking. He collaborated with fellow researchers, engineers, and industry experts to create a set of standardized metrics and test scenarios that could be universally applied across a wide range of computing systems. As Ocram’s work gained recognition, he expanded his efforts to include not only dependability attributes but also security and trustworthiness. His benchmarks became holistic, addressing the demanding properties of modern computing systems. To ensure the relevance of his benchmarks, Ocram actively engaged with industry, seeking their input and feedback. Over time, Ocram’s contributions to dependability benchmarking became the gold standard in the kingdom and beyond. His benchmarks were adopted by industry standards organizations, and his methodology became a cornerstone for evaluating and improving the reliability of computing systems worldwide. And so, thanks to Ocram’s dedication and innovation, the kingdom entered a new era of dependable computing. Engineers, armed with reliable benchmarks, could confidently build and maintain systems that met the highest standards of dependability. The tale of Ocram’s contributions to dependability benchmarking became a legend, a story passed down through the generations as a reminder of the importance of measuring and striving for excellence in the realm of computing.– Ghostwriter: ChatGPT
