Ran Wei 魏然
Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) of Computer Science at the
School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, UK.
Research interests: Model Based Systems Engineering, Model Based Systems Assurance, Safety Critical Systems Engineering, and Digital Twins.
News¶
About Me¶
I am currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Computer Science at the School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, UK. I am also a long-term visiting scholar at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.
I am an active contributing member of Structured Assurance Case Metamodel (SACM), an international standard specified by the Object Management Group. I am also an active contributing member of Goal Structuring Notation (GSN), specified by the Assurance Case Working Group. I am a certified ISO-26262 engineer, and a member of INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) UK.
Prior to my current position, I had taken the following roles:
- Assistant Professor (2023–2024) at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK — worked with Dr Lavindra de Silva and Prof Ioannis Brilakis to explore Digital Twin applications in the construction sector.
- Associate Professor (2020–2023) at the School of Artificial Intelligence, Dalian University of Technology, China — worked on the automated assurance of safety critical systems, to assure the safety of critical systems with AI/ML capabilities.
- Research Fellow (2013–2020) at the Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK — worked on Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and its application in safety critical systems. Member of the Automated Software Engineering research group.
- PhD Student (2012–2016) in the ASE research group, Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK — supervised by Prof Dimitris Kolovos. [Thesis]
Research Vision¶
Safety-critical systems require justifications that they are acceptably safe to operate in their defined operational contexts. To obtain such justifications, an engineering process typically referred to as Safety Critical Systems Engineering (SCSE) is followed. Depending on the application domain, different activities are involved in SCSE. SCSE requires extensive analysis, verification and validation activities of engineering artifacts, produced using different tools and in different formats. For most systems, a safety case must be developed, and often independently reviewed before the systems can be certified. However, existing SCSE activities require extensive manual efforts, this becomes a bottleneck, especially when (1) the complexity of systems inevitably grow; (2) systems are increasingly adaptive and open at runtime.
To address the above challenge, my research is focused on adopting state of the art technologies to enable automated means for the activities in SCSE. I have had the honour to work with some great researchers and scientists to look at automated validation of safety cases, automated system safety analysis, automated verification of system behaviours, and trustworthiness of systems at runtime. My previous endeavours have been leveraging Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) technologies due to the degree of automation they provide. I am currently looking at using Digital Twin technologies for the runtime monitoring and assurance of systems (and systems of systems). I am also looking at the possibility of leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate the development and assurance of systems. All comments are welcome! Email me if you have any questions.