Collaborative Research: Embedded in the code of the European Union
We all know that US giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft lead the world in the provision of software-based information services. What is less well known is that European industry is a global leader in so-called embedded software. This is complex software embedded in systems and devices that we use everyday from planes, trains and automobiles to healthcare devices to energy grids. A short roll call of these pan-European companies includes Airbus, Alstom, BAE, Bosch, BMW, Philips, Renault, Thales and Siemens. Many of the systems they develop require millions of lines of code to ensure they operate reliably and efficiently. For example, top-end cars with advanced driver assist and navigation systems can contain up to 100 million lines of code!
My research team at the University of Southampton develops methods and tools to help ensure that complex embedded software is fit for purpose and does not inadvertently cause systems to be unsafe or insecure. We develop advanced modelling and analysis tools in collaboration with industry and other academic teams. The EU Research Programme enables us to collaborate with leading European engineering companies, as well as other leading European universities, to develop innovative new solutions for analysing specifications and designs of embedded software.
For a UK-based research team, being part of a multi-partner EU project provides several benefits. By working with companies, we gain deeper insights into the engineering challenges they face, giving a focus to our research and helping to ensure that our results have a greater impact than would be achieved if we worked in a more isolated way. Our young researchers benefit from the experience of collaborating with our European partners, helping to broaden their perspective and experience, equipping them with skills that will benefit their later careers whether that is in academia or industry. Members of my team work with companies in the Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK.
Over the last 15 years, we have been involved in a succession of EU industry/academia research projects and a key benefit I see time and time again is that by pooling resources and working together we can achieve much more than we could as individual partners. For example, we work very closely with teams in France, Germany, Finland and Switzerland, coordinating our contributions to a software initiative called Rodin . Rodin is an open source modelling and analysis tool for embedded software and our combined effort means that the Rodin toolset has become powerful and robust enough to be used by several industrial organisations, not just in Europe but also in Japan and the USA. The Rodin toolset simply would not exist without the support and opportunities provided by EU industry/academia research projects.
The expertise and reputation that we have gained through collaborative EU projects mean that new opportunities come our way for further collaboration. This summer we will join a large new pan-European project involving companies and universities from 15 European countries that will seek to improve software safety and security for aerospace, automotive, railway and maritime systems. I very much look forward to the opportunity this will bring to work together to solve technological challenges that would be impossible to address as individual teams.
Michael's main research area is formal methods for software engineering. These are mathematical modeling and analysis methods used to increase the trustworthiness of software based systems. They are typically used for high integrity systems where software-induced failures would lead to loss of life or significant loss of business or reputation. He specialises in model-based formal methods, in particular a formal method called Event-B. His research work encompasses applications, tools and methodology for formal methods. He has made key theoretical and methodological contributions to the Event-B formal method that enable it to scale to large complex systems. These contributions enable modular analysis in terms of how systems models are structured and analysed as well as methods for development of domain-specific mathematical theories that are reusable across multiple projects.
