McSCert Research Team

Director

Richard Paige

Dr. Paige’s expertise is in Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering and technology transfer, with a particular focus on safety-critical systems and large-scale software deployment. He has published extensively on these and related topics, and is involved with a number of open-source projects on Model-Driven Engineering. He is on the editorial board for Springer’s Software and Systems Modeling, Springer’s Empirical Software Engineering, and the platinum open-access JOT Journal. He is the current Director of McSCert.

Faculty

Mark Lawford

Dr. Lawford’s expertise includes automotive software development, functional safety, software certification, application of formal methods to critical real-time systems and tool-supported safety-critical software engineering. His group has developed methods and tools to support software engineering methods in Matlab/Simulink. He is the software and functional safety advisor for the McMaster Engineering EcoCAR 3 team. He was a co-founder and a former Director of McSCert.

Office:1-905-525-9140 x 23362

Faculty

Alan Wassyng

With 50 years’ experience in both industry and academia, Dr. Wassyng is a sought-after speaker, consultant and thought leader in the certification of software-intensive systems, rigorous approaches to the development of safety-critical software and the development, evaluation and use of assurance cases. He is an expert on functional safety and hazard analysis of safety-critical systems. He was a co-founder of McSCert and was its inaugural Director. He was also a co-founder of the Software Certification Consortium in 2007, and has been the chair of the steering committee since its inception.

Office:1-905-525-9140 x 26072

Faculty

Jacques Carette

Computer Scientist, educated as a mathematician, worked as a software engineer in industry for 11 years. Currently working on generative programming, formalized mathematics, approaches to (very) long term software engineering, and programming language theory.

Faculty

Sebastien Mosser

Sebastien Mosser’s research interests are related to software engineering, and more specifically, scalable software composition, domain-specific languages and modelling. In addition, Sebastien applies his research to various domains such as cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, and, more recently, source code and micro-services architecture. His research has been conducted closely with industrial partners and has led to several technological transfers.

He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Nice (France) in 2010. He was a postdoctoral student at Inria Lille-Nord Europe in 2011 before joining SINTEF (Oslo, Norway) as a research scientist. He then joined Université Côte d’Azur in 2012, where he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor in charge of the Master of Software Architecture. Before joining McMaster University, he was an Associate Professor of Software Engineering at Université du Québec à Montréal from 2019 to 2021.
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Faculty

Claudio Menghi

Claudio Menghi received his BSc and MSc degrees in computer science from the Politecnico di Milano where he later obtained his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Carlo Ghezzi in 2015. From 2017 to 2018, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers. From 2018 to 2021, he was a Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg. He is an Assistant Professor at McMaster University.

His research interests are in formal methods and software engineering, with specific interests in cyber-physical systems, robotics, and formal verification. He has spent several years doing research with industry and applying formal methods and software engineering techniques in industrial contexts. In particular, he has led research projects with several industry partners: BOSCH and PAL Robotics in the robotics domain, and LuxSpace and QRA Corp in the aerospace and cyber-physical domain.

Professor Emeritus

Tom Maibaum

Dr. Tom Maibaum is a world-leading researcher in software engineering, with extensive experience in formal specification, formal methods, component-based development, and model-driven development. He held the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Foundations of Software Engineering.

Faculty

Spencer Smith

Spencer obtained his undergraduate and graduate (M.Eng., Ph.D.) degrees in Civil Engineering from McMaster University.  In 2000 he started a position as an Assistant Professor in the newly formed Department of Computing and Software at McMaster.  Currently, Spencer is an Associate Professor in Computing and software.  

Spencer has taught courses on such topics as the following: introduction to computing as a discipline, software design, software project management, scientific computing, and communication skills.  Spencer's research interests focus on improving the quality of research software via the application of software engineering methodologies.  Since 2006, Spencer is a licensed Professional Engineer (PEng) in the Province of Ontario.
Senior Principal Research Engineer

Vera Pantelic

Dr. Vera Pantelic’s main research interests include development and certification of safety-critical software systems and model-based development.  She brings extensive experience in tool-supported model-based design of automotive software to this project, as well as knowledge of ISO 26262 compliance.

Vera is a reviewer for a number of journals, including: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, and International journal of Control and conferences, including the International Conference on Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD), and the International conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development (MODELSWARD).

Principal Research Engineer

Victor Bandur

Dr. Victor Bandur received his B.S. and M.A.Sc. degrees from McMaster University.  He received his PhD from the University of York, UK in the area of three-valued logics and software specification.  He has researched safety assurance at the University of York and software aspects of cyber-physical systems at Aarhus University, Denmark.  He joined McSCert in 2018 as Postdoctoral Fellow.  Dr. Bandur is currently Principal Research Engineer, focusing on the next generation of in-vehicle computer and network architectures.

Post Doctoral Fellow

Horacio Hoyos Rodriguez

Dr. Hoyos’s expertise is in Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering with special interest in Model Management (validation, transformation, comparison, etc.). He received his PhD from the University of York (UK) in the area of Large Scale Complex IT Systems with a focus on Model-to-Model transformations.  He has spent several years doing research in academia and industry, applying model driven engineering techniques. He is a committer at the Epsilon, an  open source, model management framework. He joined McSCert in 2022 as Postdoctoral Fellow.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Faezeh Siavashi

Faezeh Siavashi obtained her Ph.D. in model-based verification and testing of software systems and services from Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. With several years of professional experience, she has worked as a Software/System Automation Engineer in the healthcare sector and as a Data Engineer for start-up companies in Finland.

In 2022, Faezeh joined McMaster University as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her current research focuses on model-based systems engineering for automotive systems and mobile health security.

Research Engineer

Spencer Deevy

Research Engineer

Asim Shah

Add Bio …

Resarch Engineer

Ryan Tyrrell

Having studied Mechatronics & Management at McMaster University, I strive to expand my understanding on a wide breadth of topics. My motivation comes from a passion to be self-sustained; being able to pursue my interests without restraint. This is reflected in the various research positions I worked during my undergrad.

I thrive when learning on the spot, a skill that is becoming increasingly necessary as technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As a student, I was a member of the McMaster XC and Track team, a commitment that required an organized and time managing lifestyle. I’ve continued this passion after university, training as an elite runner.

I enjoy work that involves both hardware and software components, and my current interests include embedded systems and AI based technology.

Research Engineer

Stephen Wynn-Williams

Ph.D. Candidate

Nicholas Annable

Nicholas Annable is a Ph.D. Candidate in Software Engineering at McMaster University. He received a Master’s degree (2020) and Bachelor of Engineering (2017) from McMaster University.  His main research interests are in model-driven engineering, model-based safety assurance, safety-critical systems and systems engineering in general.

Ph.D. Candidate

Habib Ben Abdallah

Habib Ben Abdallah received his M.Sc from the University of Winnipeg and is currently pursuing his Ph.D at McMaster. During his M.Sc, he formalized and developed novel deep learning models and algorithms that enable a faster convergence to the optimal solution of a given machine learning problem with less spatial complexity than conventional deep learning models such as convolutional neural networks, and with no cost to the approximation quality. He is currently interested in integrating his optimization background to the study of model safety for various applications.

Ph.D. Candidate

Thomas Chiang

Thomas Chiang has received both his B.Eng and M.A.Sc from McMaster and is currently working on his PhD. His main research for his M.A.Sc was in developing tools for the improvement of tools available for safety engineering with a focus in the automotive industry, developing tools for safety assurance. Moving forward he will continue research in model driven engineering environments, with a focus on safety assurance in medical devices and software while working in a model driven software engineering environment.

PH.D Candidate

Federico Formica

Federico Formica is a Ph.D. student in Software Engineering at McMaster University, collaborating with McSCert on research projects.
He received an M.Sc and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), where he focused on Robotics, Mechatronics, and Control Theory.
He is interested in safety and testing methodologies of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the unique challenges this type of system creates. He is researching techniques to automatically generate test cases for testing CPS from several domains using Matlab and Simulink.
Ph.D. Candidate

Eric Lesiuta

Ph.D. Candidate

Tiago Machado

Currently, Tiago is a Ph.D. Candidate in Software Engineering at McMaster University and a Research Assistant for McSCert industrial projects. Before moving to Canada, he spent several years working in the industry for a well-known R&D company in Brazil on various medical engineering projects, most of them on medical ultrasound-based technologies. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics and Biomedical Engineering from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar, Brazil) and the University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil), respectively. His research interests lie in model-based development, system engineering, functional safety analysis and assurance case development for software-intensive safety-critical systems in general. Additionally, he has also a broad interest in natural language processing, and signal/image processing techniques, including different machine learning paradigms, applied to medical imaging systems, particularly for the medical ultrasound applications domain.

PH.D. CANDIDATE

Mohamadreza Sabeghi

A Ph.D. student who received his master’s degree from Sharif University of Technology in Software Engineering. Model-Driven Engineering, Model-Driven Methodologies, and System Analysis are in the circle of my interest.

Ph.D. Candidate

Alexander Schaap


Ph.D. Candidate

Hong Sun

Hong Sun is a PhD Candidate pursuing his interests in safety analysis and model-based engineering.

Ph.D. Candidate

Lindsay White

Lindsay White is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in model-driven engineering, with a focus on security for safety-critical systems. She previously completed a Ph.D. in mathematics, and an M.Sc. in Computational Science & Engineering, investigating privacy for anonymous databases.

Master's Candidate

Arthur Faron

Arthur Faron is pursuing an M.A.Sc. in software engineering at McMaster University. He previously completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering & Society (Co-op) at McMaster University. He is currently the Connected & Autonomous Vehicle lead for the McMaster EcoCAR team competing in the EcoCAR EV Challenge.

Master's Candidate

Ryan Kapinski

Master's Candidate

Gordon Marks

MASTER'S CANDIDATE

Arman Samiei

Arman Samiei is an M.A.Sc. student in Software Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Mosser. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Computer Engineering and Physics from Amirkabir University of Technology. His primary research interests include Model-Driven Engineering, Software Testing, Scientific Computing, and Machine Learning.

MASTER'S CANDIDATE

Anthony Shenouda

Hey there, I’m Anthony Shenouda! I am working towards my MASc. (Masters of Applied Science) in Software Engineering at McMaster University. My passion lies in exploring the intricate world of systems safety engineering within the realm of autonomous systems. Currently working on GM projects and with McMaster EcoCar as the Systems Safety Lead developing test plans, safety requirements, and system monitoring systems!

MASTER'S CANDIDATE

Nafiseh Valizadeh Shiran

Currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Software Engineering at McMaster University, I began my program in September 2022. My research and academic interests are firmly centered around software engineering, cloud computing, and queueing theory.

Master's Candidate

Minghze Wang

Mingzhe is an MSc student in Computer Science at McMaster University. He holds a B.A degree in Economics and a B.A.Sc degree in Computer Science. His research involves graph query optimization, distributed data management, and in general high-performance data management.

Master's Candidate

Hassan Zaker Zavardehi

Hassan Zaker Zavardehi received his bachelor’s degree from Sharif University of Technology in Computer Engineering. Now, he is pursuing his master’s degree in software engineering under Dr. Paige’s supervision.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Rumael Abbasi

Rumael Abbasi is an undergraduate student at McMaster studying Mechatronics Engineering. He has a keen interest in embedded systems, control, and artificial intelligence.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Abdul Maksoud Abdullah

Abdullah joined McMaster University in the fall of 2018. He is currently studying Software Engineering.

Undergraduate Resarch Assistant

Sathurshan Arulmohan

My name is Sathurshan Arulmohan. I am in my third year of software engineering undergraduate degree. This is my second time interning at McSCert working in projects related to autonomous driving features, traffic simulations, and analyzing NLP tools. I am also an active member of McMaster’s ecoCAR team where I transfer skills and knowledge between the team and McSCert. 

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Julia Brzustowski

Julia Brzustowski is a second-year student at McMaster University studying computer science.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Nirmal Chaudhari

Hello! My name is Nirmal and I am a third year Software Engineering student at McMaster. As part of a Summer internship, I am currently working on developing a new source code merging tool with Dr.Mosser. I enjoy working with new tools and applying them to develop meaningful projects.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Ahmed Elzaria

Hello! I am heading into my second year of Software Engineering and Management at McMaster University. My current internship involves understanding and working with compiler architecture, specifically the Intermediate Representation and Optimizer elements by the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure Project, a collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies. My current interest lies in full-stack development.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chris George

Chris George is an undergraduate student in the field of Mechatronics and Biomedical Engineering.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Elliot Gorman

Elliot Gorman is an undergraduate student at McMaster University studying Computer Science. He is interested in pursuing a career in embedded systems development.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Madhur Jain

Hi, I am a Computer Science Student at IIT Bhilai and currently doing my research on source code differencing and git merge conflicts. The project involves studying different versions of the same file and attempts to solve the merge conflicts in the file based on logically established heuristics and techniques. I have an interest in everything that is software and tech. Always excited to discuss and know new ideas and innovations.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Muhammad Jawad

Muhammad Jawad is an undergraduate software engineering student at McMaster University. Muhammad’s academic journey is complemented by his practical experiences, including software developer internships at McSCert and the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre. These experiences have allowed him to apply his skills in Python, Java, and ARCore, contributing to the development of NLP-based systems and AR-powered mobile applications. Driven by a passion for emerging technologies, Muhammad is particularly interested in machine learning, big data, and cloud technologies. He sees the potential of these fields to revolutionize industries and solve complex problems. Through his academic and practical pursuits, Muhammad aims to deepen his knowledge and skills in these areas, with the goal of leveraging them to drive innovation and make a positive impact.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Nitish Kumar

 Nitish Kumar is an undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is currently working under Dr. Sébastien Mosser at McMaster University. His primary interests are in the fields of Software Design and Embedded Systems.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Rawan Mahdi

Rawan Mahdi is an undergraduate Software Engineering student. Her interests revolve around explainable AI and its various safety-critical use cases in the field of healthcare.

Alumni

Jala Malcolm

Jala is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics & Biomedical Engineering at McMaster University.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Nathan Perry

Nathan is a third-year student at McMaster University studying software engineering.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Stefan Ramdhan

Stefan Ramdhan is an undergraduate student studying Computer Engineering and Management at McMaster University. He is interested in graduate studies and working in Embedded Systems, ADAS, and Connected Vehicle Technology.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Riddhi Shah

Riddhi Shah is a third-year computer science student studying at McMaster university. Her interests are Software development, web development, databases, and game design. 

Undergrad Research Assistant

Safiullah Shah

Safiullah Shah is a third-year undergraduate student at McMaster University studying Electrical Engineering.

His engineering interests include electrified transportation, optimization & control, and electromagnetics & photonics. Safiullah plans to pursue these interests in graduate school.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Winnie Trandinh

Winnie Trandinh is an undergraduate student studying Mechatronics Engineering and Management at McMaster University. His interests lie in the fields of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and controls.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Clara Wong

Clara Wong is an undergraduate student at McMaster University studying Electrical and Biomedical Engineering.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Kai Zhu

Kai Zhu received his B.Sc in biology from McMaster University, and is currently pursuing a B.Eng in Software Engineering with an interest in continuing onto graduate studies in topics involving machine learning, image processing, and software design.