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¶
Modern safety-critical systems must be rigorously justified as acceptably safe before deployment. This justification process — Safety Critical Systems Engineering (SCSE) — demands extensive analysis, verification, and validation across diverse engineering artifacts, tools, and formats, often culminating in a safety case that must withstand independent review and certification. Yet SCSE today remains overwhelmingly manual, creating a bottleneck that intensifies as systems grow in complexity and become increasingly adaptive and open at runtime.
My research tackles this bottleneck by bringing automation to the core activities of SCSE, spanning the following interconnected themes:
Model Based Systems Engineering & Tooling. Much of my work is grounded in MBSE, which provides the rigour and machine-processable representations needed for automation. I have contributed to the development of modelling standards — notably the Structured Assurance Case Metamodel (SACM) and Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) — and built open-source tooling to support them, including automated generation of graphical editors for UML/SysML profiles and model management capabilities within the Epsilon platform ecosystem.
Traceability & the Digital Thread. A recurring challenge in systems engineering is maintaining coherent traceability across heterogeneous artifacts produced by different tools throughout the system lifecycle. My work addresses this by establishing model-based digital threads that link requirements, design models, safety analyses, and assurance arguments, enabling automated impact analysis and change propagation when any part of the system evolves.
Automated Safety Analysis & Assurance. Working with wonderful collaborators, I have contributed to automated safety case validation, automated system safety analysis (e.g. the DECISIVE framework for iterative design-time safety analysis), formal verification of system behaviours through the integration of theorem provers such as Isabelle/SACM, and the ACCESS framework for assurance-case-centric engineering of safety-critical systems.
Digital Twins for Runtime Assurance. More recently, I have been exploring Digital Twin technologies for runtime monitoring and assurance of systems and systems of systems — from highway infrastructure maintenance to space launch vehicles. Digital Twins offer a promising paradigm for maintaining a live, model-based representation of a system throughout its operational life, enabling continuous assurance even as the system and its environment change.
LLMs for Systems Engineering. I am also investigating how Large Language Models can be harnessed to support the development and assurance of safety-critical systems — a direction with exciting potential but also significant challenges around trust and reliability.
I am always happy to discuss ideas — feel free to reach out by email!