Research

08 Dec 2011 No Comments

The last four years of my life

From the PhD thesis Diagram Predicate Framework meets Model Versioning and Deep Metamodelling, defended on the 7th December 2011:

Preface

The last four years of my life have been dedicated to writing this thesis and to making it as perfect as possible. These years have witnessed days and nights of hard work, discussion, stress, frustration, anguish, insomnia, as well as praise, relief, travelling and fun.

If you are going to read this thesis, I hope that you will find it interesting. If you are just going to browse through it quickly, I hope that you will find the models as beautiful as I do. If you are only interested in this preface, I hope it will leave you with a nice memory.

Bergen, 3rd October 2011

Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been possible without the contribution of the outstanding individuals I have met during these four years.

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Uwe Wolter, for teaching me a lot of interesting knowledge which spans from mathematics to philosophy and history, as well as for giving me invaluable feedback about my research. He deserves much of the credit for this thesis and I am indebted to him for all his help and inspiration, scientifically and otherwise. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Khalid A. Mughal, for suggesting that I enrol in a PhD programme and for supporting all my choices when I finally followed his suggestion. With time I realised that his initiative saved me from becoming a frustrated software engineer.

A special thanks goes to Adrian Rutle, for helping me to get started with my research and for sharing many good times with me, both in Bergen and while travelling. He has been a brilliant colleague and a good friend, and I have many good memories from these years.

I am grateful to my parents Pompilio and Loretta, for all they have done for me, especially for setting my life on what I believe is the right path. I hope that this thesis will make them as proud of me as I am of them.

“Tusen takk” to Synnøve Solberg Tokerud, for her love and friendship, for teaching me about Norwegian and Norway, as well as for her beautiful smile which always helped me to stay positive.

The Department of Informatics at the University of Bergen has given me a private office, a good salary and great financial support, and I am thankful for that. I would like to thank the Programming Theory group, especially Marc Bezem, Torill Hamre, Anya Helene Bagge, Valentin David, Dag Hovland and Federico Mancini, for creating a stimulating environment to work in, for all the chats about informatics and teaching, for all the empirical studies on espresso and on chocolate spreads, as well as for all the feedback they gave me about my work. I am also grateful to the administration of the Department of Informatics, especially Ida Holen, for patiently listening to my rants every time I needed to vent my frustration, Petter Bjørstad and Torleiv Kløve, for supporting my stays abroad, and Steinar Heldal, for guiding me through the bureaucracy of the University.

My research was carried out in cooperation with fellow researchers from the Department of Computer Engineering at the Bergen University College. Thanks to Yngve Lamo, for his suggestions about how to deal with the Norwegian system, and Florian Mantz, for being an excellent flatmate and for preparing pancakes every Sunday.

Part of this thesis was written during my 4-month stay at the Department of Computer Engineering at the Autonomous University of Madrid. “Muchas gracias” to Juan de Lara and Esther Guerra, for taking care of me during my stay and for giving me plenty of insights which ended up being almost half of this thesis.

I would like to thank my opponents Reiko Heckel and Einar Broch Johnsen, for all the time they have spent reviewing this work, and Michal Walicki, for coordinating the committee. I am also grateful to all my fellow researchers and anonymous reviewers who pointed out flaws and suggested possible improvements in my research.

Despite all the time spent preparing this thesis rather than hanging out, I still have many friends left and they should all be awarded for their patience. In Bergen, Mikal Carlsen Østensen helped me with practically everything before and after my move to Norway. Diego Fiore has been one of my closest friends, who shared countless discussions about the grotesque society we live in with me and was a perfect companion on many suffocating trips around the world. Paolo Angelelli has also been a very good friend, who contributed a lot to the discussion about how to develop an ideal society. My stay in Madrid would not have been the same without Lucia Cammalleri, Teresa Terrana and Daniele Sidoti, who treated me like a close friend since the first day we met. In Italy, my good, old friends Maura Brandimarte, Albert Marsili, Marino Di Carlo, Graziano Liberati and Angelo Di Saverio have been there every time I was back home, and I really appreciate it.

Finally, this thesis would have not reached this level of art without the free and open source software I use and enjoy. A special thanks goes to the communities behind GNU, Linux, KDE, Firefox, Kile, Inkscape, Subversion and Git.

by Alessandro in Research Tags: , , , , , , ,

26 May 2011 2 Comments

Four months in Madrid

Shipol Airport, Asterdam. Two hours left before my connection to Bergen. I am not coming back home from a business or leisure trip this time, but from a four-month exchange stay in Madrid.

Research fellows at the University of Bergen are encouraged to spend from three to six months abroad to get in touch with another research group and work in a different environment. During the MoDELS 2010 conference in Oslo, me and my supervisor discussed the possibility of my exchange stay with Juan de Lara and Eshter Guerra from the Autonomous University of Madrid. The idea of staying some months in the south of Europe after three years in the North was very appealing for me, and Juan and Esther seemed very positive as well. Eventually the idea became a plan and I came to Madrid in February.

I lived in the very centre of Madrid, which happens to be the very centre of Spain as well. My flat was located 200 meters away from the so-called Kilometre zero, the ancient starting point of all the measurements in Spain. I loved the atmosphere of the city centre, incredibly lively and dynamic… I even loved the noise that you hear in the bars… Yes, the noise of people speaking and toasting and laughing and enjoying life, something that reminded me a bit of Italy and that I missed so much in Norway, where people are usually scared of speaking too loud or too much.

Juan and Esther have been very kind with with me. They helped me with the accommodation and the transportation, provided me an office and a workstation, introduced me to the campus and the city. It has been a rewarding experience to work with them, both scientifically and personally, and I sincerely hope that we will continue the cooperation in the future.

But my stay in Madrid would have not been the same without the people I met there. Thanks to Serena, I got in touch with a group of people from Italy, France and Spain. It was a pleasure to meet Federica, Antonino, Mathilde, Vani, Ysa, Clara and Jose. But above all, it was fantastic to meet Lucia, Teresa and Daniele; lovely people, who treated me like a close friend since the first day we met. I wish most of Italians were people like them, I would consider to move back to Italy.

by Alessandro in Research, Travels Tags: , , , , , ,

05 Jul 2009 1 Comment

TOOLS 2009

This time it was the TOOLS conference in Zurich, Switzerland. Me and Adrian arrived on a Saturday, without any particular plan for the evening. Many locals suggested us to go to Lucerne because of the first edition of the Lucerne festival. Adrian managed to convince me to go there, and I have to admit it was a good idea. Loads of people, music played on all the squares of the old town, stands providing food and drinks. And right after the sunset, the best fireworks I have ever seen: 25 minutes of pyrotechnic show with lights coming from both sky and lake… Just lovely!

All the stereotypes about Swiss precision and efficiency were destroyed in one go on the way back to Zurich. We were supposed to take the train from Lucerne at 2:30, but probably too many people shared with us the same plan. :) The result was kilometric queues on the ticket machines and people packed in trains like in India. The train we took did not even arrive to Zurich and despite the promises of the railways personnel there, no further train came before one hour. In the end, tired of waiting, we took a taxi back to the city.

Well, despite this “original” start, the conference went very well. Zurich is lovely and welcomed us with a great warm summer weather. The ETH, which hosted the conference, is located on top of a hill with a nice view over the city. The event was well organised and composed by several co-located conferences and workshops. Adrian made a brilliant presentation of our last work and many asked questions about it. I feel like the goals of our participation to the conference have been all fulfilled. Food was also great; to eat once more authentic Fondue and Rösti was a pleasure. :)

I left Zurich by train on Saturday, and my destination was not Bergen but Tortoreto, my home town in Italy. The trip home was a sort of odyssey. The train I took in Milan had broken air conditioning system and I had to stay inside it for 5 hours with no chance to open the windows… And if this was not enough, the catering services of the Italian railways had a strike the very same day, i.e. it was not even possible to buy water! You can imagine what this lead to, I will not spend time describing it. Italy is somehow always able to remind me that the choice to move away was the right one.

by Alessandro in Research, Technology, Travels Tags: , , , ,

18 Apr 2009 No Comments

Marburg and FASE’09

I have the feeling that my blog is slowly becoming just a collection of reports about my trips… Not that there is anything wrong with that, but a bit more of variety would be better. Anyway, here I am once more talking about research and travelling.

During March I had two trips. The first was in Marburg, a little town about one hour train north of Frankfurt, Germany. This trip was not due to a conference, but because I needed to work together with my colleague Adrian – who was spending three months as visitor research at the University of Marburg – on an paper which we had to submit for a journal publication. Marburg is a delicious university town, it reminds me a bit L’Aquila, at least the L’Aquila I am familiar with. I have been staying one week in a king sized room of a guest house, with furnitures from the beginning of the 20th century and a bathroom that was probably bigger than the room I have in Bergen. :) No, I did not have money to waste in my travelling budget, on the contrary I tried to spare… This was actually the cheapest solution available since Marburg was hosting a big conference on Medicine exactly that week and all the hotels were fully booked. We managed to get finished with the paper and to submit it. But fortunately it was not only work, we have also been able to enjoy German beer and food. I enjoyed so much a couple of “auflauf” (casserole) I tried. I learned also something curious: many of the public toilets in Marburg has special sink specifically designed to… puke. :) A local PhD student commented with “We have strong drinking traditions in Germany…”. Amazing!

The second trip was to York, as always together with Adrian, to attend the FASE 2009 conference, part of ETAPS. Here I presented our last published paper. I was not so stressed in the end, and everything went smoothly. I am very satisfied by the presentation, and receiving compliments from colleagues and other researcher was a great reward. The very same evening after the presentation we had a “gala dinner”, which was actually delicious, and of course we continued the celebrations in the pubs of the city centre. The ale beers from the local breweries helped me to forget about the research carried on in the last months… :) The city of York was somehow fascinating, also because of its history. Founded by Romans in the year 71 and captured by the Vikings in 866, it shares a lot with the history of both my home country and the country where I live now.

I hope to be able to upload pictures from both trips soon!

by Alessandro in Research, Travels Tags: , , , , , ,

08 Dec 2008 3 Comments

NWPT’08

As always with some delay I can finally write a bit about what my experience for the NWPT’08 conference in Tallinn, Estonia. The trip started immediately with some emotions: my colleague Adrian realised that he forgot the passport home just before to go to the airport, so we had to catch a taxi to run first to his place and then finally to our destination. Fortunately we had no problem to check-in and leave Bergen, and late in the night we were in the old city of Tallinn.

The NWPT’08 conference took place in a an historical building in the old city. The articles presented at the conference were quite theoretical, and I have to admit that I did not understand many of them, but this is probably (hopefully? :) ) normal when people are coming from very different areas of research. I finally had my first presentation as well. We had indeed two extended abstracts accepted in the workshop, and I presented the one titled “A category-theoretical Approach to the Formalisation of Version Control in MDE”. Despite the initial twitter, I have to say that the presentation was smooth and I am really satisfied with it.

I had the chance to go a bit around the old city of Tallinn during the weekend, and it is lovely. There is a lot of history everywhere, and sometimes it seems to be back in time. However, despite the old-fashion look, Tallinn is really ahead in time for what concerns Internet. Yes, because Internet is available for free everywhere through wifi access. Note that with “for free” I do not mean that you can steal the connection from some unwary network owner, but that it is provided by the public administration. Estonian people I met seemed very helpful and friendly, and most of them were able to speak English fluently. Last but not least, the food we tasted in the restaurants was definitely very good. At the end, it was a very nice experience, except for a last detail…

The journey back to Bergen was a sort of odyssey. We had a connected flight to Bergen, with stop over at Copenhagen. The day that we were supposed to leave, we woke up in the middle of an extreme snow storm. Our flight was not cancelled, so we had to reach the airport at 16:30, with expected departure at 18:00. The taxi driver had even problems to come to the airport because of the loads of snow all over the streets. The situation looked not promising at all, but they were keeping our flight delayed. After waiting many hours at the gate with no precise information, the flight was declared cancelled at 00:00. The airline could not provide us an hotel, since they had to handle so many cancellation during the day. After having our flight rescheduled for the day after, we had to come back to our hotel, where they had fortunately two rooms available for the night. But the story does not end here… We had exactly the same schedule for the day after, but the luck was not with us. The flight took off at 21:00 instead of 18:00, and we obviously lost the connection in Copenhagen. We hoped that they could reschedule us to take the last flight from Copenhagen to Bergen at 22:45, but guess what? It was cancelled due to another snow storm in Stockholm… So another night abroad, this time in a Radisson SAS hotel at least. :) After more than two days of journey, finally we landed in Bergen the morning after…

Next post will be probably from Italy, I am going home for Christmas vacation finally… ;)

by Alessandro in Research, Technology, Travels Tags: , , ,

11 Nov 2008 No Comments

MoDELS’08

One month ago I was in Toulouse, France, to attend the MoDELS’08 conference… Sounds important, isn’t it? :) Well, actually for me it really was. MoDELS’08 has been the first international conference I attended, and I am glad that I started with a very relevant one. I had the chance to go there because me and my colleague Adrian had an article accepted — the first in my PhD programme — in the ChaMDE 2008 workshop, a satellite event of the conference.

The six-days conference was plenty of researchers from world-wide, including many of the “big names” in software engineering. Getting in touch with some of them was definitely interesting. Many of the works presented at the conference seemed brilliant… I even learned what does it mean “megamodelling” — which is, in my opinion, the most childish keyword ever appeared in computer science. However, I have to admit that I was also disappointed by the general lack of applied results. The interest of industry in Model-Driven Engineering might vanish again if research does not (quickly) provide anything really useful to them. There is a urgent need for techniques and tools that simply work, and this is possible only if we have mature standards, which is definitely not the case nowadays. None of the works focused on that topic… Kind of surprising to me. Of course, theory is fundamental, but sometimes I had the feeling of listening to someone “selling thin air” rather than showing concrete results. To be honest, the idea that some theory “might be implemented” one day by the industry have never convinced me. The fact that the popularity of Model-Driven Engineering nowadays is not the one that researchers expected ten years ago is just an additional proof for me. Maybe one day I will be selling thin air myself too, who knows… ;) But for the time being it seems to me that research is going in a dangerous direction…

Anyway, the city of Toulouse is just gorgeous. So old and so modern at the same times, it offers a lot of sightseeing, attractions and restaurants were we had delicious meals and wines. I am waiting to upload a bunch of pictures on Flickr. Unfortunately my Linux distribution provides a buggy version of the software I use to handle pictures and I have to wait the (lazy) developers to read my bug report and fix it… More complaints on this in my next post. :)

Well, at the moment that’s it… My next destination? NWPT’08 conference in Tallin, Estonia. I will present a work there, so keep the finger crossed for me as always! ;)

by Alessandro in Research, Technology, Travels Tags: , , , , ,

21 Feb 2008 1 Comment

Female G spot can be detected

Americans were the first to land on the Moon, Italians (and in particular researchers from Abruzzo, my home region) were the first to “photograph” the female G spot… :)

Read the full article here.

by Alessandro in Research