Andrea Zisman - Parnas Fellow at Lero

Professor Andrea Zisman attained her PhD in the area of Computer Science. Her research covers a wide range of topics in the field of software engineering and its application to society, including food security and the circular economy. Adding to her PhD, her MSc., and her BSc., she is also one of the very few holders of Lero’s prestigious Parnas Fellowship: a senior position granted to elite academics within software research. Besides being a notable international researcher, Professor Zisman is also proficient in the analysis, consultancy and development areas of software, showcasing her ability across all aspects of the discipline. Andrea holds a professorship at The Open University in the United Kingdom, and was formerly a professor at the School of Informatics at City University London.

“I was awarded Lero’s Parnas Fellowship, a prestigious position intended to allow software researchers to visit and collaborate with academic members of Lero. I have been collaborating in different ways, and there is still scope to do even more. Although the Parnas Fellowship is awarded in a certain year, it is not limited to that year – it supports continued collaboration. I have participated in Lero events ranging from PhD forums to industrial days, summits, and various interview panels. I also co-supervise PhD students at Lero and participate in PhD examinations.

The research groups at Lero are dynamic, recognised internationally, and their members develop research to very high standards. A common activity in the academic community is to collaborate with international colleagues. The Parnas Fellowship supports bi-directional collaboration between the fellow and members of Lero by facilitating visits to different Lero sites, meetings with other academics and researchers, conversations, and development of research in different topics.

Software engineering is a very broad field. I specialise in the topics of adaptive software systems, traceability of software artefacts, service-based systems and microservices, secure software engineering, and values and ethical concerns in software systems. More recently, I am interested in the problems regarding digitalisation of the food supply chain and circular economy, and how software engineering can help these two topics. The collaboration with Lero can be very fruitful, given the number of researchers and projects at Lero within my topics of interest.

"The research groups at Lero are dynamic, recognised internationally, and their members develop research to very high standards."

I collaborate very closely with members of Lero at University of Limerick such as the SPARE group (Security, Privacy, Adaptation & Requirements Engineering). At the moment, I am also developing new collaborations with members of the Global Software Engineering development group, as well as members in other Lero sites such as Dublin and Maynooth. Moreover, my interest in the digitalisation of the food supply chain and circular economy supports several activities at Lero, as well as interaction between relevant industries in the UK and Ireland.

Lero is a world-class research centre and provides opportunities to develop pioneering research in many areas of computing. I am privileged to be part of the “family”, and only wish I had more time to collaborate even more with its members.”