I am Full Professor for Empirical Software Engineering at the Software Engineering Research Lab of the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden, and Senior Scientist heading the research division Requirements Engineering at fortiss GmbH, the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems and services.

I received my MSc degree (Diplom, 2007) in Computer Science and Cognitive Neuroscience from the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU). I then joined the Technical University of Munich (TUM) where I received my PhD (Dr. rer. nat., 2011) and subsequently my habilitation degree (facultas docendi, 2015) prior to joining the founding team of the Centre Digitisation.Bavaria (ZD.B), a research incubator of the Bavarian state government for topics related to the digital transformation. There, I served as director for a funding programme to establish a series of interdisciplinary research groups at different Bavarian state universities. My academic mentors include Alexander Knapp and Martin Wirsing (Diploma), Manfred Broy (Doctorate), and Roel Wieringa (Habilitation).

Since 2019, I am with the Software Engineering Research Lab Sweden (SERL Sweden) at BTH – having a strong focus on and reputation in empirical and applied software engineering research – and fortiss GmbH – having a strong focus and reputation in applied research and technology transfer on software-intensive systems and services. An overview of the research groups I am chairing can be taken from here.

My research is rooted in the area of Empirical Software (and Systems) Engineering. Of particular interest are early stages of development and their quality improvement with a particular focus on requirements engineering, software processes, and quality management — all in close collaboration with relevant industries. Further, I work on methods for interdisciplinary software engineering research in the larger context of empirical software engineering methodologies and the underlying philosophy of science.

I am convinced that research and education should be open, transparent, and accessible to everyone as they are key to achieve a socially and economically sustainable development of our society. I therefore dedicate a large extent of my time to contribute to it. I have served, for instance, as the co-founding chairman to Pint of Science Germany e.V., a non-profit society to foster science communication, and I strongly advocate and foster open science in software engineering with focus on open data and reproducibility.

 

Scientific Acknowledgements and Community Awards


Best Paper Award
International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM’ 22)

 Distinguished Reviewer Award
29th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’ 21)

 Best Paper Award
International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundations for Software Quality (REFSQ’ 21)

 Distinguished Reviewer Award
ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE’ 20)

Best Industry Paper Award
International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM’ 20)

 Best Paper Candidate
27th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’ 19)

Best Paper Award
22nd Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CibSE’ 19)

ACM Recognition of Service Award
12th International Symposium on 
Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM’ 18)

Best Paper Award
10th International Software Quality Days (SWQ’ 18)

Publons Peer Review Award
Publons Peer Review Award 2017 as one of the top 1% of reviewers in the category “Multidisciplinary”

Best Paper Award
17th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES’ 16)

Best Paper Award
8th International Software Quality Days (SWQ’ 16)

Best Presentation Award
18th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE’ 14)

 Best Paper Candidate
17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE’ 13)

 Best Paper Candidate
14th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE’ 10)

On a more Personal Note

On a more personal note: I am born in Northern Spain (Asturias), raised in Germany (Bavaria), and I work and live in two countries. I’m a frequent traveller between my home towns, my working places, and wherever research collaborations, conferences, or my whim might take me, one of my favourite spots being Malta. I’d consider myself a (multi-national) European citizen by heart. One of the things I particularly enjoy is socialising – with the Software Engineering community and beyond – and I love anything related to the sea; and if I can combine both, even better. One of the spots you can therefore often find me is underwater as I particularly love scuba diving, may it be in the greater Karlskrona area with our local dive club (Carlskrona Seal Divers) or when travelling. What started by coincidence during a vacation at the Red Sea in 2017, to an extent out of boredom and curiosity, became soon a passion. I particularly love cold water diving (both recreational and technical diving), the diving community around it, and all the social components it entails.

Whenever the occasion allows for it, I also enjoy aligning my research and teaching activities with the more technical side of diving, e.g. as part of practical student courses (check out the sensor network we are currently working on to measure the water quality here). You can see some pictures from the underwater world on my Instagram feed, but please note that I am ridiculously unskilled and too cheap to handle any camera above the price range of a simple GoPro.