Institute Name: Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Description: The Department of Software (Llenguatges i Sistemes
Informatics) was created during the academic reorganization of the Universitat
Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 1986, by merging the departments
dealing with software and informatics in different schools. The UPC was
created in 1971. It is one of nine universities in
Catalonia. The university is located on 12 campuses, the two main ones
being in Barcelona. Almost all technical fields are taught at the faculties
and technical schools of the UPC. In addition, the UPC provides academic
supervision to a number of associated schools and hosts several research
institutes. The Software department is one of the 38 departments of the
UPC.
The department is responsable for offering software and informatics courses to several schools of the UPC, mainly in the School of Informatics of Barcelona, but also in the Schools of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona and Terrassa, the School of Mathematics and Statistics of Barcelona and the Technical Colleges of Terrassa , Manresa and Vilanova. The Department also offers two of the PhD Programs of UPC (Software and Artificial Intelligence), and one Master Program in Software Engineering and has extensive links with the industry. The department has more than one hundred faculty members, plus some full-time grant holders and PhD students. The administrative staff consists of 7 full-time employees.
From the research point of view the department is divided into five sections, including Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, Information Systems, Programming and Theoretical Computer Science. Each faculty member belongs to one of the above sections, and may collaborate with the other. Most of the researchers associated with the RENOIR project are members of the Information Systems section, whose interest lie mainly in conceptual modelling of information systems, software process modelling, requirements engineering, object-orientation, deductive databases and database interoperability. Some works of other sections are also related with the requirements engineering field :foundations of the specification languages in the Programming section, and natural language requirements in the Artificial Intelligence section. Research projects with a major requirements engineering content held by members of those sections include: DADES, a language for expressing requirements of information systems (funded by CICYT, the National Research Agency); ICARUS, Incremental Analysis of Requirements Specification (funded by ESPRIT); ODISSEA, Specification, Validation, Design and Evolution of Information systems from Deductive Conceptual Models (funded by CICYT, the National Research Agency); EXCALIBUR, A Multiparadigm Specification and Programming Environment (funded by CICYT, the National Research Agency) ; Quality control of natural language specifications (funded by CICYT, the National Research Agency)
Researchers associated with the project:
Pere Botella (responsible), Xavier Franch, Xavier Burgues, Antoni Olive, Maria Ribera Sancho, Carme Quer, Dolors Costal, Nuria Castell, Jordi Alvarez, Angels Hernandez, and the cooperation of Fernando Orejas
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Dr. P. Pere Botella
Nationality: Spanish
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Pere Botella holds a first degree in Engineering (1973) and a PhD in Computer Science (1983). Dr. Pere Botella is a full professor in the Department of Software at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. He is also Dean of the School of Informatics (Facultat d'Informatica) and Director of the Master Program on Software Engineering. He has served as vice-president of the UPC for 5 years. Prior to his current post, he served as a system analyst for the local government and the university computing center, for several years . He has been principal investigator of the EXCALIBUR project (development of a multiparadigm software development environment). He has been task-leader in the ICARUS project, an ESPRIT II project on requirements engineering and has worked in other projects such as DEGEL (COMMETT) , ADSPF (National Research Agency) and several industrial-funded projects. He has been member of the Euromethod Programme Management Board (a C.E.C. - DG III project), and has served as a reviewer for the national research agency and for the ESPRIT program. His fields of research and interest are Software Engineering in general, Requirements Engineering, and Software Process Technology. Prof. Botella has been author or co-author of more than 50 technical papers on his fields of interest, lectured a quite big number of short seminars, tutorials and courses, and served in several committees (steering, program or organizing ones) for national and international conferences on software engineering (ICSE, ESEC, and others), serving as general chair for the ESEC?95 conference held in Spain.
Name: A. Olive
Nationality: Spanish
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Antoni Olive
is currently professor of Information Systems at the Software Department
of the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, where he has worked since
1978. Previously, he worked in two software houses, where he participated
in and was responsible of the development of several commercial software
tools. His research interests include information systems development (with
emphasis in conceptual modelling) and deductive databases. He has led a
research project involving 10 researchers, on the specification validation
and design of information systems from deductive conceptual models. He
has been author/co-author of more than 50 research reports and has published
articles in international journals and conferences. He has been chairman
of the IFIP WG 8.1 (design and evaluation of information systems) and program
Committee member of more than 20 international conferences, including VLDB,
IFIP WCs, CAiSE, ERA and EDBT. Also, he has served as a reviewer to several
international journals, and to the Esprit programme. He will be the general
chairman of the IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference on 'Information Systems
Concepts' (1995).
Selected Publications:
A. Olive.(1989) On the design and implementation of information systems from deductive conceptual models. VLDB 89, Amsterdam, Morgan-Kaufman.
P. Botella, X. Burgues, X. Franch (1989): Combining the imperative and the equational programming paradigms in the Excalibur system; Proc. of Int. Workshop on Software Engineering & its applications, pp.1303-1318, Ed. EC2, Paris
A. Olive, C. Quer. (1994): Determining Object Interaction in Object-Oriented Deductive Conceptual Models. Information Systems, Vol. 19, No.3, pp. 211-227.
A. Olive, M. Sancho. (1994 ): Deriving transactions from deductive conceptual models of information systems. CAiSE 94, Utrecht, Springer-Verlag
N.Castell, O.Slavkova, Y. Toussaint, A.Tuells (1994) : Quality Control of Software Specifications Written in Natural Language. 7th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, Austin (Texas-USA), Ed.: Gordon and Breach Science.
N. Castell, O. Slavkova (1995) : Metrics for Quality Factors in the LESD Project. ESEC'95, Sitges (Barcelona, Spain), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 989, Springer-Verlag
N. Castell, A. Hernandez (1995) : Filtering Software Specifications Written in Natural Language. Progress in Artificial Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 990, Springer-Verlag (1995).
J. Alvarez, N. Castell, O. Slavkova (1996) : Combining Knowledge and Metrics to Control Software Quality Factors. Achieving Quality in Software, Ed.: Chapman & Hall
P.Botella, X. Franch, X.Burgues (1996) : Using Non-Functional Requirements in Component-Based Software Construction. Proc. of Jornadas de Ingenieria de Software, Sevilla (Spain)
X. Franch, P. Botella (1997) : Supporting Software Maintenance winth Non-Functional Information. EUROMICRO Working Conference On Software Maintenance and Reengineering, Berlin (Germany), North-Holland publ. comp.
X. Franch, P. Botella, X. Burgues, J.M. Ribo (1997) : ComProLab: A Component Programming Laboratory. 9th International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, Madrid (Spain), Ed. Knowledge Systems Institute, U.S.A.
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Pere Botella,
Address: Departament de Llenguatges i Sistemes Informàtics,
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya,
C/Jordi Girona Salgado, 1-3, Edif. C5, 08034 Barcelona - Spain
Telephone number: + 34 3 401 6960
Telefax number: + 34 3 401 7113
EMail: botella@lsi.upc.es
List of Members