ToK Workshop #2
The DEVASSES ToK Workshop #2 is on the books, and it was a successful opportunity for transfer of knowledge among the project researchers and also with external researchers.
The event was held at the Institute of Computing on August 21-22, 2014 and organized by the UNICAMP. The theme for the workshop was Design and V&V Methodologies for Dynamic Systems, but the technical discussion also included other topics that go beyond that and are relevant for the project.
During the workshop the program included presentations of two featured lecturers who presented relevant topics for the project:
- Cláudia Werner is a Professor of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She presented her university and their work on "Dynamic adaptation: For process and Software Reconfiguration".
- Piedade Costa de Oliveira is Member of the Legal Service of the European Commission and an EU Fellow IBE/USP (Institute for studies Brazil Europe of the University of São Paulo). She presented information of the ongoing proposals for general data protection regulation in Europe.
Besides these presentations, there was time for 16 presentations where the project researchers had the opportunity to showcase their recent and ongoing research work. The full list of presentation is available here.
We highlight that 3 of these presentation were already on works that involve multiple partners of the project, resulting from secondment works and that are already in an advanced state.
The sessions had an average of more than 30 attendants, with only ~15 being project members from all the project partners (UNICAMP, UC, UNIFI, UFAL) . Besides the project members, in the attendance there were researchers from institutions as UFRJ, Legal Service of the European Commission, USP, Brasilian Air Force Academy, IBM, INPE, CPqD, as well as several local students.
Every presentation slot included time reserved for discussion, which allowed for more detailed comments on the work and to explore the opportunity of future research paths.
Finally, it was time for discussion about the project management, past and future secondments were analyzed, and future partnerships between EU and Brazil were prospected.
UNIFI researchers at UFAL
The Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) is nowadays "invaded" by researchers of the University of Florence (UNIFI)!
The group of seconded researchers consists of: Andrea Bondavalli, Andrea Ceccarelli and Leonardo Montecchi.
Andrea Bondavalli is an Associate Professor at the University of Florence where he leads the Resilient Computing Lab. His research activity is focused on safety, security, fault tolerance, evaluation of attributes such as reliability, availability and performability of complex systems and infrastructures. Andrea B. is the Principal Investigator of UNIFI in DEVASSES and will be at UFAL for a 1-month secondment.
Andrea Ceccarelli is a Researcher at the University of Florence, which through years gained experience in design and assessment (especially by testing) of critical systems. His PhD focused the analysis of critical systems through rigorous, reproducible and comparable experimental assessment. Andrea C. will fulfill a 2-months secondment.
Leonardo Montecchi is a Post-Doc research fellow at the University of Florence. His research interests focus on model-based evaluation and model-driven engineering techniques applied to the design and assessment of critical systems, and during his PhD he proposed a methodology and framework for model-driven dependability analysis of critical embedded systems and directions towards systems of systems. Leonardo will be at UFAL for 3-months.
The plans for their secondments include sharing their experience with UFAL researchers and students, with the objective of building collaborations.
Secondment Kick-off Workshop
To kick-off the secondments' works, UFAL organized a workshop on August 12 with attendance of local students and professors. Besides a presentation of the UNIFI research group by A. Bondavalli, the presentations of the workshop included: “Online monitoring – A framework for user identity verification” by A. Bondavalli; “Design and security assessment of a protocol for continuous user identity verification” by A. Ceccarelli, presenting recent results on the design and assessment of a continuous authentication protocol for biometric devices; “Model-based evaluation: some challenges and approaches” where L. Montecchi introduced model-based evaluation, providing an overview of three contributions of UNIFI in that field, and also “Dependable and Secure Services: Research at the University of Coimbra” by Nuno Laranjeiro, a researcher from the University of Coimbra, also seconded at UFAL.
Nuno Laranjeiro is at UFAL
Nuno Laranjeiro is at Maceió, for a one month secondment at Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL). He comes from the University of Coimbra, where he is an Assistant Professor.
His research interests include experimental dependability evaluation of services, including robustness and interoperability assessment.
During the secondment, Nuno will be collaborating with local researchers on the key topics targeted by work package 1 of the project, including project deliverables that are under development.
Plans for the secondment also include the participation in the workshop organized at UFAL with local and other seconded researchers that will arrive in the next few days.
Marco Vieira’s secondment and talk at UNICAMP
Marco Vieira has arrived to Limeira for a 2-month secondment at the UNICAMP. Marco is an Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra and is the scientific coordinator of the project.
Taking advantage of the presence of multiple researchers from Portugal in Limeira, the II workshop DEVASSES@FT was held on July 24. During the workshop Marco presented the talk “To BEnchmark or Not To BEnchmark Security“. The workshop included also presentations by other seconded researcher, local students and other visiting researchers. Check the workshop pages for details!
During the secondment, Marco will continue the ongoing work with local researchers including: co-advising Tânia Basso on a reference architecture for data privacy in web applications and co-advising the work of Daniel Vecchiato on assessing the security of mobile devices. The plan also includes lectures on dependability and security evaluation targeting the local students.
Finally, the secondment will allow to search for funding opportunities for the medium/long term and also to work on the organization of the upcoming TOK Workshop and on the definition of the preliminary conceptual framework architecture for the DEVASSES project.
