A Talk on Model Based Engineering

This talk has been given on June 17, 2022, upon the invitation of the Smart Cities/Digital ecosystems LAB led by Prof. Dr. Mehmet Akşit.
Title: Introducing Model-based Systems Engineering: Why do we need modeling and how easily can we define our own modeling language and its toolset?
Abstract: Modeling has been considered as a technique for performing abstractions on the real-world entities so as to manage their complexity. With abstract models, many benefits can be achieved including better and quick understanding of complex problems, precise communication, early analysis and simulation of decisions, and automation support (e.g., code/document generation). Models can be specified using diverse modeling approaches including natural languages, boxes and lines and modeling languages. Practitioners from diverse industries may define their own domain-specific modeling languages along with its toolset (e.g., editor and code generators) using the meta-modeling technologies. Meta-modeling technologies support defining a meta-model for a modeling language, which consists of abstract concepts of the language and their relationships (meta-model), and also the concrete symbols that correspond to those concepts (i.e., actually the language itself). Meta-modeling technologies can further produce the modeling editors automatically and support many other features including the development of model transformation tools. In this talk, Dr. Ozkaya discusses the notions of model, modeling, modeling languages, and meta-modeling, and introduces one of the top-used meta-modeling technologies called Metaedit+.
Biography: Mert is currently an associate professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at Yeditepe University, Istanbul. Mert holds a BS degree in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey (2009), MSc in Computer Science from University of Essex, UK (2011), and PhD in Computer Science from City, University of London, UK (2014). Mert’s research interests include software architectures, modeling languages, formal verification, and empirical software engineering. Mert works closely with industry and aims to provide extensible model-based (and model-driven) solutions to diverse problems from different industries, including defense & military, logistics, car manufacturing, and e-commerce, and maximise the business productivity and the quality of software systems development. Mert has been and is the principal investigator of several research projects funded nationally. Mert is also the technical consultant for several EU ITEA research projects, including Panorama, Bumble, and AITOC. Mert has published several high-quality conference and journal papers on software architectures, modeling languages, and surveys about modeling/meta-modeling. Moreover, Mert is the reviewer for many national and international conferences and journals on software engineering.