Research

Please check out this short video for a quick introduction to my research on Design Methodologies for Cyber-physical Systems.

Problem Statement

Cyber-physical systems across application domains are getting increasingly complex, driven by five technological and market trends: 1) all current design parameters, e.g. number of interfaces and lines of code, are increasing by an order of magnitude, 2) increased customization of systems at design time, 3) continuous evolution of systems after deployment, 4) increased system autonomy, and 5) integration into complex connected and distributed systems-of-systems of which nobody is in complete control. The consequences of increasing complexity are visible in daily practice in which industry experiences major setbacks in their attempts to efficiently develop well-performing cyber-physical systems.

Design Methodologies for Cyber-Physical Systems

To manage this increasing complexity, new design methodologies are required. The goal of my research is to develop and apply new methodologies to address this challenge. This is done through a combination of my academic work at the Systems and Networking Lab at the University of Amsterdam and the applied research done at ESI (TNO). My chair Design Methodologies for Cyber-physical Systems at the University of Amsterdam combines two research areas, described below, to address the stated complexity problem.

The first area considers design methodologies for cyber-physical systems in which abstraction, provided by models used for specification, analysis, simulation, or synthesis, play an essential role. While this area applies to cyber-physical systems in general, the second area focuses on design aspects of real-time systems. Together, these two areas capture much of my existing work in both academic (TU/e, CTU Prague, CISTER) and applied research (ESI) in different application domains and industries in which I have worked, e.g. avionics (Airbus), consumer electronics (Philips & NXP Semiconductors), and defense (Thales).

More information about the two research areas is provided below. This text primarily targets a technical audience and contains links to relevant publications.