Tag: uva

License to Teach

Posted on by bennyakesson

It is my great pleasure to announce that I have received my University Teaching Qualification (UTQ), essentially my license to teach. The UTQ (Basiskwalificatie Onderwijs, BKO in Dutch) is a proof of teaching skills for university teaching staff, which allows you to demonstrate a proven ability to develop and teach courses at university level. It is recognized by all Dutch universities.

One of the most important things I have learned during the UTQ trajectory is the constructive alignment method for course design. I already knew that aligning goals, execution, and assessment was an important part of course design, yet challenging to do in practice. I appreciate that the constructive alignment workshops not only communicated the importance of this alignment, but also provided the tools (e.g. specification tables and tips for assessment) to identify and address misalignments. Constructive alignment may not be the only way to approach course design, but I see it as a very useful method and a good starting point from which further exploration can be done.

One of my stated goals was to learn how to make my lectures more interactive. This is something I knew was important to further improve my teaching, but I did not quite know how to achieve. This was addressed by the workshop on activating teaching that came paired with the excellent list of 50 Classroom Assessment Teachniques (CATs)  by Angelo and Cross. Based on this material, I have now significantly increased the level of interaction and formative assessment in my course Embedded Software and Systems.

Lastly, the module about organizing teaching was very important to lift my view from my course and start looking more at the program that provides the context, in my case the Master of Software Engineering program. Being aware of this context not only makes my course better, but also the program, resulting in a better educational experience for the students. Interviewing people in the program for this module also provided a trigger to go talk to colleagues and build a network that will help both my research and education at UvA going forward.

Design Methodologies for Cyber-physical Systems

Posted on by bennyakesson

In this short two minute presentation, I introduce myself and my fundamental and academic research into design methodologies for cyber-physical systems. I sketch a high-level view of the problem and outline a direction based on model-based engineering in which my previous work into domain-specific languages and analysis non-functional behavior fits. For a more elaborate description of my research, please have a look at my research page.

Paper Accepted at GPCE 2020

Posted on by bennyakesson

A paper entitled “PReGO: a Generative Methodology for Satisfying Real-Time Requirements on COTS-based Systems – Definition and Experience Report” was accepted for publication at the 19th International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts & Experiences (GPCE). This is my first paper in collaboration with my new colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, and it describes work done in the TeamPlay project, a three-year research project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

The paper addresses the problem of satisfying real-time requirements in industrial systems using unpredictable hardware and software, which limit or entirely prevent the application of established real-time analysis techniques. To this end, we propose PReGO, a generative methodology for satisfying real-time requirements in industrial commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems. We report on our experience in applying PReGO to a use-case: a Search & Rescue application running on a fixed-wing drone with COTS components, including an NVIDIA Jetson board and a stock Ubuntu/Linux. We empirically evaluate the impact of each integration step and demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology in meeting real-time application requirements in terms of deadline misses and energy consumption.

Bachelor Thesis on Synthetic Interface Generation Defended

Posted on by bennyakesson

Mohammed (Mo) Diallo just defended his bachelor thesis entitled “Towards the Scalability of Detecting and Correcting Incompatible Service Interfaces“. This work is carried out in the context of a project between ESI (TNO) and Thales that developed a five-step methodology for automatic detection and correction of behavioral incompatibilities resulting from evolving software interfaces (see paper for more details). Mo’s thesis provides a starting point for evaluating the scalability of the proposed methodology. An essential ingredient towards this is the ability to synthetically generate interfaces of various complexity. The thesis has two main contributions: 1) a notion of interface complexity in terms of inputs, outputs and non-determinism is defined and the relation between these parameters is studied, and 2) the methodology for a ComMA interface generator using user-supplied complexity parameters, and its implementation in a supporting tool, is introduced.

I would like to thank Mo for the excellent work he delivered in this thesis, and I am happy that he will continue working over summer to extend it.

Announcement of Appointment as Professor at UvA

Posted on by bennyakesson

The press release announcing my appointment as Professor at the University of Amsterdam is finally ready. Time to make them and ESI (TNO) proud!

The Chair of Design Methodologies for Cyber-Physical Systems focuses on two research areas. 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), and defense (Thales). They are also broad enough to sustain a long-term effort towards managing complexity of cyber-physical systems. For more information about the research, click the ‘Research‘ button in the menu at the top of the page.

My first mission will involve developing and teaching a course on Embedded Software and Systems, a course that is extremely relevant to our work at ESI. The course is primarily aimed at students following the Master in Software Engineering and teaches the fundamentals of embedded system development. This includes modelling systems using StateCharts, Petri Nets, Data-flow graphs, and Domain-Specific Languages, embedded hardware, functional and timing verification, and design-space exploration. I will also explain the industrial reality behind some of these aspects by drawing on my experience from projects at ESI.

During the course, the students will get practical experience with model-based engineering as they work in groups to program a LEGO Mindstorm Rover using Stateflow to autonomously follow a path, while avoiding obstacles. From this batch of students, I am hoping to find some promising ones that can help us make the next innovative steps in model-based engineering for complex cyber-physical systems for their thesis project.