Dr Michel Wermelinger

Profile
Research Activity
Publications

Professional biography

Michel's area of teaching and research is software engineering.

He is currently the School of Computing and Communications lead for the Institute of Coding.

He was the Head of the Computing Department in 2012/13 and the Deputy Head of the Computing and Communications Department in 2013/14. Being fluent in German, he was an academic reviewer of the Technology Faculty of Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg on behalf of OU Validation Services.

Before joining the OU, he was an assistant professor in the Computing Department of the New University of Lisbon, and a consultant to a software house, both in Portugal.

Research interests

Michel's main theme of research is to mine open source repositories to improve the understanding and practice of software maintenance and evolution. Michel is also interested in data visualisation. He has proposed a novel application of concept lattices to visualise hierarchical socio-technical relationships, and developed an interactive scatterplot tool for easier exploration of data sets by non-specialists.

He is part of the Software Engineering and Design group and in particular a co-I of the EPSRC Platform Grant Secure, Adaptive and Usable Software Engineering. He was a member of the £16m smart city MK:Smart project.

See Michel's personal website for details on his research, student supervision and services to the academic community.

Teaching interests

Michel's current teaching is centred on programming. In particular he

co-designed and wrote the text of a free interactive activity explaining what algorithms are, used by an educational publisher in a Computing A-level worksheet;
consulted for a BBC 4 programme (and corresponding iWonder guide) on algorithms, which was nominated for a Learning On Screen award;
co-authored a free pack of leaflets on coding, algorithms, and the history of computing, which is now available as a digital file (the 13,000 print copies have been distributed);
wrote a free online 'hour of code' activity to introduce programming and reported on his experience of using a web-based IDE;
was the main author of the Learn to Code for Data Analysis MOOC, also available (without discussion forum) on OpenLearn, and reported on the pedagogical approach taken;
is the presentation chair of Algorithms, Data Structures and Computability;
authored two Python programming units for Introduction to Computing and IT 2.

He is also part of the team developing the Open Networking Lab. Further details on Michel's teaching are here.

Research Activity

Research groups

Name	Type	Parent Unit
CRC: Software Engineering and Design	Group	Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology

Publications

Journal articles

Exploring design principles for data literacy activities to support children’s inquiries from complex data (2019-09)
Wolff, Annika; Wermelinger, Michel and Petre, Marian
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 129 (pp. 41-54)

Locating bugs without looking back (2018-09-30)
Dilshener, Tezcan; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
Automated Software Engineering, 25(3) (pp. 383-434)

Assessing architectural evolution: a case study (2011-10)
Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun; Lozano, Angela and Capiluppi, Andrea
Empirical Software Engineering, 16(5) (pp. 623-666)

Commentary on ‘Software architectures and mobility: A roadmap’ (2010)
Wermelinger, Michel and Bandara, Arosha
Journal of Systems and Software, 83(6) (pp. 899-901)

The CommUnity Workbench (2007)
Oliveira, Cristóvão and Wermelinger, Michel
Science of Computer Programming, 69(1-3) (pp. 46-55)

Learning software engineering at a distance (2006)
Quinn, Brendan; Barroca, Leonor; Nuseibeh, Bashar; Fernandez-Ramil, Juan; Rapanotti, Lucia; Thomas, Pete and Wermelinger, Michel
IEEE Software, 23(6) (pp. 36-43)

Modelling the GSM handover protocol in CommUnity (2005-12-01)
Oliveira, Cristóvão; Wermelinger, Michel; Fiadeiro, José Luiz and Lopes, Antónia
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 141(3) (pp. 3-25)

Higher-order architectural connectors (2003-01)
Lopes, Antónia; Wermelinger, Michel and Fiadeiro, José Luiz
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 12(1) (pp. 64-104)

A Graph Transformation Approach to Software Architecture Reconfiguration (2002-08)
Wermelinger, Michel and Fiadeiro, José Luiz
Science of Computer Programming, 44(2) (pp. 133-155)

Towards a chemical model for software architecture reconfiguration (1998-10)
Wermelinger, Michel
IEE Proceedings - Software, 145(5) (pp. 130-136)

Connectors for mobile programs (1998-05)
Wermelinger, Michel and Fiadeiro, José Luiz
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 24(5) (pp. 331-341)

Book chapters

Some issues in the 'archaeology' of software evolution (2011)
Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In: Fernandes, J. M.; Lämmel, R.; Visser, J. and Saraiva, J. eds. Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering III. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (6491) (pp. 426-445)
ISBN : 978-3-642-18022-4 | Publisher : Springer

Empirical studies of open source evolution (2008)
Fernandez-Ramil, Juan; Lozano, Angela; Wermelinger, Michel and Capiluppi, Andrea
In: Mens, Tom and Demeyer, Serge eds. Software Evolution (pp. 263-288)
ISBN : 978-3-540-76439-7, 978-3-642-09529-0 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin

Enhancing dependability through flexible adaptation to changing requirements (2004-11)
Wermelinger, Michel; Koutsoukos, Georgios; Lourenço, Hugo; Avillez, Richard; Gouveia, João; Andrade, Luís and Fiadeiro, José Luiz
In: de Lemos, Rogério; Gacek, Cristina and Romanovsky, Alexander eds. Architecting Dependable Systems II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (3069) (pp. 3-24)
ISBN : 3540231684 | Publisher : Springer-Verlag

A mathematical semantics for architectural connectors (2003)
Fiadeiro, José Luiz; Lopes, Antónia and Wermelinger, Michel
In: Backhouse, R and Gibbons, J eds. Generic programming: advanced lectures. Lecture notes in computer science (2793) (pp. 178-221)
ISBN : 3540201947 | Publisher : Springer-Verlag | Published : Berlin, Germany

Edited book

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering: 7th International Conference Proceedings (2004)
Wermelinger, Michel and Margaria-Steffen, Tiziana eds.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
ISBN : 3540213058 | Publisher : Springer-Verlag | Published : Berlin

Conference items

Learning to program: from problems to code (2019-01-09)
Piwek, Paul; Wermelinger, Michel; Laney, Robin and Walker, Richard
In : Third Conference in Computing Education Practice (CEP) (9 Jan 2019, Durham, UK)

Risk Containers – A Help or Hindrance to Practitioners? (2019)
Leigh, Andrew; Wermelinger, Michel and Zisman, Andrea
In : IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA 2019) (25-29 Mar 2019, Hamburg)

An Open Networking Lab for practical open education (2019)
Kear, Karen; Smith, Andrew; Donelan, Helen; Mikroyannidis, Alexander; Jones, Allan; Rosewell, Jonathan; Wermelinger, Michel; Connolly, Teresa; Sanders, Chris; Peasgood, Alice; Williams, Judith; Moss, Nicky and Third, Allan
In : OER19: Recentering Open (10-11 Apr 2019, National University of Ireland, Galway)

The Open Networking Lab: Hands-on Vocational Learning in Computer Networking (2018-10)
Mikroyannidis, Alexander; Kear, Karen; Smith, Andrew; Jones, Allan; Rosewell, Jonathan; Donelan, Helen; Wermelinger, Michel; Sanders, Chris; Third, Allan and Connolly, Teresa
In : IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (3-6 Oct 2018, San Jose, California, USA)

Open Networking Lab: online practical learning of computer networking (2018-10)
Rosewell, Jonathan; Kear, Karen; Jones, Allan; Smith, Andrew; Donelan, Helen; Mikroyannidis, Alexander; Peasgood, Alice; Sanders, Chris; Third, Allan; Wermelinger, Michel; Moss, Nicky; Williams, Judith and Connolly, Teresa
In : The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference: Blended and online Learning: Changing the Educational Landscape (10-12 Oct 2018, Aarhus University, Denmark)

Wide, long, or nested data? Reconciling the machine and human viewpoints (2018-09-07)
Hall, Alan Geoffrey; Wermelinger, Michel; Hirst, Tony and Phithakkitnukoon, Santi
In : Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) (5-7 Sep 2018, London)

The Open Networking Lab: an open online course for experiential learning of computer networking (2018)
Kear, Karen; Smith, Andrew; Mikroyannidis, Alex; Jones, Allan; Rosewell, Jon; Donelan, Helen; Wermelinger, Michel; Sanders, Chris; Third, Allan and Connolly, Teresa
In : Association for Learning Technology (ALT) annual conference 2018 (11-13 Sep 2018, Manchester)

Structuring Spreadsheets with the “Lish” Data Model (2017-07)
Hall, Alan Geoffrey; Wermelinger, Michel; Hirst, Tony and Phithakkitnukoon, Santi
In : European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group Conference 2017 (06 Jul 2017, London)

Software Architecture Risk Containers (2017)
Leigh, Andrew Philip; Wermelinger, Michel and Zisman, Andrea
In : European Conference on Software Architecture (11-15 Sep 2017, Canterbury, UK)

An Evaluation of Design Rule Spaces as Risk Containers (2016-07-21)
Leigh, Andrew; Wermelinger, Michel and Zisman, Andrea
In : 13th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA) (5-8 Apr 2016, Venice, Italy) (pp. 295-298)

Locating Bugs without Looking Back (2016-05-14)
Dilshener, Tezcan; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : Mining Software Repository (14-15 May 2016, Austin, TX, USA) (pp. 286-290)

Some future scenarios for ‘in the wild’ visualisations (2015-10-13)
Cavero, Jose; Wermelinger, Michel and Wolff, Annika
In : Death of the Desktop: Envisioning Visualization without Desktop Computing Workshop (09 Nov 2014, Paris)

Investigating naming convention adherence in Java references (2015-09)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : 31st International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME2015) (29 Sep - 1 Oct 2015, Bremen, Germany) (pp. 41-50)

Teaching software systems thinking at The Open University (2015-05)
Wermelinger, Michel; Hall, Jon; Rapanotti, Lucia; Barroca, Leonor; Ramage, Magnus and Bandara, Arosha
In : Joint Software Engineering Education and Training Conference (18-22 May 2015, Florence, Italy) (pp. 307-310)

An architectural evolution dataset (2015-05)
Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : 12th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (16-17 May 2015, Florence, Italy) (pp. 502-505)

A survey of the forms of Java reference names (2015-05)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension (18-19 May 2015, Florence, Italy) (pp. 196-206)

Run-time generation, transformation, and verification of access control models for self-protection (2014-06)
Bailey, Christopher; Montrieux, Lionel; de Lemos, Rogério; Yu, Yijun and Wermelinger, Michel
In : SEAMS'14: 9th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (2-3 Jun 2014, Hyderabad, India) (pp. 135-144)

Developing a domain-specific plug-in for a modelling platform: the good, the bad, the ugly (2013-05-21)
Montrieux, Lionel; Yu, Yijun and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 3rd Workshop on Developing Tools as Plug-ins (21 May 2013, San Francisco)

Issues in representing domain-specific concerns in model-driven engineering (2013-05)
Montrieux, Lionel; Yu, Yijun; Wermelinger, Michel and Hu, Zhenjiang
In : Workshop on Modeling in Software Engineering @ ICSE 2013 (18-19 May 2013, San Francisco)

INVocD: Identifier Name Vocabulary Dataset (2013)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (18-19 May 2013, San Francisco)

The Challenge of Software Complexity (2013)
Moore, Kevin and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the European Conference on Complex Systems 2012 (3-7 Sep 2012, Brussels) (pp. 179-187)

Software evolution prediction using seasonal time analysis: a comparative study (2012)
Goulão, Miguel; Fonte, Nelson; Wermelinger, Michel and Brito e Abreu, Fernando
In : 16th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (27-30 Mar 2012, Szeged, Hungary)

Improving the tokenisation of identifier names (2011)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (25-29 Jul 2011, Lancaster, UK) (pp. 130-154)

Sound Spheres: A Design Study of the Articulacy of a Non-Contact Finger Tracking Virtual Musical Instrument (2011)
Hughes, Craig; Wermelinger, Michel and Holland, Simon
In : 8th Sound and Music Computing Conference (6-9 Jul 2011, Padova, Italy)

Tool support for UML-based specification and verification of role-based access control properties (2011)
Montrieux, Lionel; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : 8th joint meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (4-9 Sep 2011, Szeged, Hungary)

Challenges in Model-Based Evolution and Merging of Access Control Policies (2011)
Montrieux, Lionel; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : Joint 12th International Workshop on Principles on Software Evolution and 7th ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution (5-6 Sep 2011, Szeged, Hungary)

Mining Java Class Naming Conventions (2011)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (25-30 Sep 2011, Williamsburg, VA, USA) (pp. 93-102)

Relating Developers’ Concepts and Artefact Vocabulary in a Financial Software Module (2011)
Dilshener, Tezcan and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (25-30 Sep 2011, Williamsburg VA, USA)

Maleku: an evolutionary visual software analytics tool for providing insights into software evolution (2011)
González, Antonio; Therón, Roberto; García-Peñalvo, Francisco; Wermelinger, Michel and Yu, Yijun
In : 27th International Conference on Software Maintenance (25-30 Sep 2011, Williamsburg VA, USA)

Exploring the Influence of Identifier Names on Code Quality: An empirical study (2010-03)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 14th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (15-18 Mar 2010, Madrid, Spain) (pp. 156-165)

Tracking clones' imprint (2010)
Lozano Rodriguez, Angela and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 4th International Workshop on Software Clones (8 May 2010, Cape Town, South Africa)

Using formal concept analysis to construct and visualise hierarchies of socio-technical relations (2009-05)
Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Strohmaier, Markus
In : Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering, Companion Volume (18-24 May 2009, Vancouver)

Managing assumptions during agile development (2009)
Ostacchini, Ireo and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Fourth ICSE Workshop on Sharing and Reusing Architectural Knowledge (16 May 2009, Vancouver, Canada)

Relating identifier naming flaws and code quality: An empirical study (2009)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 16th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (13-16 Oct 2009, Lille, France)

Design Principles in Architectural Evolution: a Case Study (2008-10)
Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Lozano Rodriguez, Angela
In : Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (28 Sep - 4 Oct 2008, Beijing, China) (pp. 396-405)

Assessing the effect of clones on changeability (2008-10)
Lozano, Angela and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (28 Sep - 4 Oct 2008, Beijing, China) (pp. 227-236)

Evaluating the relation between changeability decay and the characteristics of clones and methods (2008-09)
Lozano Rodriguez, Angela; Wermelinger, Michel and Nuseibeh, Bashar
In : 4th International ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution and Evolvability (15-16 Sep 2008, L'Aquila, Italy) (pp. 100-109)

Graph-centric tools for understanding the evolution and relationships of software structures (2008)
Yu, Yijun and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (15-18 Oct 2008, Antwerp, Belgium) (p 329)

A model-driven approach to extract views from an architecture description language (2007-01)
Oliveira, Cristóvão and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA'07) (6-9 Jan 2007, Mumbai, India)

A Prolog toolkit for formal languages and automata (2005)
Wermelinger, Michel and Dias, Artur Miguel
In : Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (27-29 Jun 2005, Caparica, Portugal)

Challenges in Software Evolution (2005)
Mens, Tom; Wermelinger, Michel; Ducasse, Stéphane; Demeyer, Serge; Hirschfeld, Robert and Jazayeri, Mehdi
In : 8th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (5-6 Sep 2005, Lisbon, Portugal)

A survey of self-management in dynamic software architecture specifications (2004)
Bradbury, Jeremy S.; Cordy, James R.; Dingel, Juergen and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGSOFT Workshop on Self-managed Systems (31 Oct - 1 Nov 2004) (pp. 28-33)

Architectural primitives for distribution and mobility (2002)
Lopes, Antónia; Fiadeiro, José Luiz and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 10th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (18-22 Nov 2002, Charleston, South Carolina, USA) (pp. 41-50)

Maintaining software through intentional source-code views (2002)
Mens, Kim; Mens, Tom and Wermelinger, Michel
In : Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (15-19 Jul 2002, Ischia, Italy) (pp. 289-296)

A Graph based architectural (re)configuration language (2001)
Wermelinger, Michel; Lopes, Antónia and Fiadeiro, José Luiz
In : 8th European software engineering conference held jointly with 9th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering (10-14 Sep 2001, Vienna, Austria) (pp. 21-32)

Towards a software evolution benchmark (2001)
Demeyer, Serge; Mens, Tom and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 4th International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (Sep 2001, Vienna, Austria) (pp. 174-177)

A different perspective on canonicity (1997)
Wermelinger, Michel
In : Fifth International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'97 (3-8 Aug 1997, Seattle, WA, USA) (pp. 110-124)

A hierarchic architecture model for dynamic reconfiguration (1997)
Wermelinger, Michel
In : 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering for Parallel and Distributed Systems (17-18 May 1997, Boston, MA, USA) (pp. 243-254)

Conceptual graphs and first-order logic (1995)
Wermelinger, Michel
In : Third International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS '95 (14-18 Aug 1995, Santa Cruz, CA, USA) (pp. 323-337)

Basic conceptual structures theory (1994)
Wermelinger, Michel and Lopes, José Gabriel
In : 2nd International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'94 (16-20 Aug 1994, College Park MD, USA) (pp. 144-159)

Conceptual structures for modeling in CIM (1993)
Wermelinger, Michel and Bejan, Alex
In : First International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'93 (4-7 Aug 1993, Quebec City, Canada) (pp. 345-360)

An X-Windows Toolkit for knowledge acquisition and representation based on conceptual structures (1993)
Wermelinger, Michel and Lopes, José Gabriel
In : Conceptual Structures: Theory and Implementation: 7th Annual Workshop (8-10 Jul 1992, Las Cruces, NM, USA) (pp. 262-271)

Thesis

Specification of Software Architecture Reconfiguration (1999-12)
Wermelinger, Michel
PhD thesis Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Teoria Básica das Estruturas Conceptuais (1995-01)
Wermelinger, Michel
mphil thesis Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics

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