Short bio

Sylvain Guérin is a lecturer (associate professor) in software engineering in the IT department at IMT Atlantique, Brest. He is a member of the P4S (Processes for Safe and Secure Software and Systems) team at the Lab-STICC (UMR 6285). After a career in industry, he defended in 2023 a Ph. D. thesis entitled “FML: A Model Federation Language For Semantic Interoperability of Heterogeneous Information Sources” [3]. His area of research and teaching is software engineering, with a particular focus on modeling and model-driven engineering (MDE).

He is particularly interested in the problem of managing the coherence of multiple concerns at business level, each of which has its own autonomy and life cycle, with its own tools and artifacts. This raises the problem of heterogeneous information sources, their (re-)interpretation and consistency management according to their evolution. In this context, the “model federation” approach [1][3][11][12] proposes to explicitly reify the links between federated models, and to associate behavior with them. This approach is based on a modeling language called FML, which is both a language for conceptualization and reification of interpretation, but also has a references mechanism that enables federation connects to heterogeneous data sources. He is the main contributor to the Openflexo software infrastructure, which is an implementation of this solution.

His work has led him to promote modeling in various contexts:

• “Model-Oriented Programming“ (MOP)[5] is the proposal of a programming paradigm that allows strong coupling between code and model, without code transformation and/or generation, avoiding round-trip-related issues. PAMELA [8] is a modeling framework written in Java that follows this paradigm. PAMELA provides a smooth integration between model and code and enables Java developers to handle software development both at conceptual level and at source-code level. Execution results from a composition of model interpretation and specific code execution.
• The “cybercontracts“ approach [9][2] is a generalization of work on “Model-Oriented Programming” (MOP) and “Aspect-Oriented Programming” (AOP), applied to the domain of cybersecurity
• He promotes the use of models by non-expert users of modeling techniques. In this context, “Free Modelling” [3][13] aims to provide tools for capturing business expertise in the form of models, based on the artifacts manipulated by different domain experts. The aim is to co-construct a model and its metamodel from examples that are explicit for the domain experts, using the representation they are familiar with. A prototype (FreeModellingEditor) has been developed on the Openflexo infrastructure.
• Finally, he is interested in Industry 4.0, and more specifically in the Digital Twin. He defends the idea of the Digital Twin, linked to its reference system, as a place for aggregating and integrating data sources and models, to address diverse concerns.

Keywords

• Software engineering
• Model Driven Engineering (MDE)
• Model Federation
• Openflexo
• Free Modelling
• metamodelling
• model transformations
• languages
• compilation
• ontologies
• reliable and secure software
• cyber-contracts
• formal methods

References

[1] Jean-Christophe Bach, Antoine Beugnard, Joel Champeau, Fabien Dagnat, Sylvain Guérin, and Salvador Martínez. 10 Years of Model Federation with OpenFlexo: Challenges and Lessons Learned. In International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS), 2024

[2] Sylvain Guérin, Joel Champeau, Salvador Martínez, and Raúl Mazo. Security contracts : A property-based approach to support security patterns. ICISSP ’24, Rome, 2024.

[3] Sylvain Guérin FML: A Model Federation Language For Semantic Interoperability of Heterogeneous Information Sources. Ph. D. Dissertation, 2023, École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées de Bretagne.

[4] Tom Leclerc, Soumya Paul, Jussi Roberts, Fabien Dagnat, Florian Ledoux, Jean-Christophe Bach, Marcus Wallum, Nicky Mezzina, Daniel Fischer, Sylvain Guérin, Ihab Benamer, and Pierre JeanJean. A flexible and robust framework for the secure systems engineering of space missions. In 17th International Conference on Space Operations, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 6-10 march 2023, 2023.

[5] Sylvain Guérin, Joel Champeau, Antoine Beugnard, and Salvador Martínez. Monitoring Association constraints in model-oriented programming. In MLE’2023 workshop, MODELS’23, 2023.

[6] Drouot Bastien, Valery Monthe, Sylvain Guérin, and Joël Champeau. Security Analysis : From model to system analysis. In CRiSiS 2022 : International Conference on Risks and Security of Internet and Systems, Sousse, Tunisia, December 2022.

[7] Sylvain Guérin, Joel Champeau, Jean-Christophe Bach, Antoine Beugnard, Fabien Dagnat, and Salvador Martínez. Multi-level modeling with Openflexo/FML : A contribution to the multi-level process challenge. Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures (EMISAJ), 17 :9–1, 2022.

[8] Sylvain Guérin, Guillaume Polet, Caine Silva, Joel Champeau, Jean-Christophe Bach, Salvador Martínez, Fabien Dagnat, and Antoine Beugnard. PAMELA : An annotation-based java modeling framework. Science of Computer Programming, 210 :102668, 2021.

[9] Caine Silva, Sylvain Guérin, Raúl Mazo, and Joel Champeau. Contract-based design patterns : A design by contract approach to specify security patterns. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES ’20, New York, NY, USA, 2020. Association for Computing Machinery.

[10] Tithnara Nicolas Sun, Bastien Drouot, Fahad Golra, Joël Champeau, Sylvain Guérin, Luka Le Roux, Raúl Mazo, Ciprian Teodorov, Lionel Van Aertryck, and Bernard L’ Hostis. A Domain-specific Modeling Framework for Attack Surface Modeling. In ICISSP 2020 : 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy, volume 1 of Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy, pages 341– 348, Valetta, Malta, February 2020.

[11] Fahad Rafique Golra, Fabien Dagnat, Jeanine Souquières, Imen Sayar, and Sylvain Guérin. Bridging the gap between informal requirements and formal specifications using model federation. In Einar Broch Johnsen and Ina Schaefer, editors, Software Engineering and Formal Methods, pages 54–69, Cham, 2018. Springer International Publishing.

[12] Fahad R. Golra, Antoine Beugnard, Fabien Dagnat, Sylvain Guérin, and Christophe Guychard. Addressing modularity for heterogeneous multi-model systems using model federation. In Companion Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity, MODULARITY Companion 2016, page 206–211, New York, NY, USA, 2016. Association for Computing Machinery.

[13] Fahad R. Golra, Antoine Beugnard, Fabien Dagnat, Sylvain Guérin, and Christophe Guychard. Using free modeling as an agile method for developing domain specific modeling languages. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 19th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS ’16, page 24–34, New York, NY, USA, 2016. Association for Computing Machinery.

[14] F. R. Golra, A. Beugnard, F. Dagnat, S. Guérin, and C. Guychard. Continuous requirements engineering using model federation. In 2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), pages 347–352, 2016.

[15] Antoine Beugnard, Fabien Dagnat, Sylvain Guérin, and Christophe Guychard. Des situations de modélisation pour décrire un processus de modélisation. Ingénierie des systèmes d’information, 20(2) :41 –66, 2015

[16] A. Beugnard, F. Dagnat, S. Guérin, and Christophe Guychard. Des situations de modélisation pour évaluer les outils de modélisation. In INFORSID, 2014.

[17] Christophe Guychard, Sylvain Guérin, Ali Koudri, Antoine Beugnard, and Fabien Dagnat. Conceptual interoperability through models federation. In Semantic Information Federation Community Workshop / 16th International Conference, MODELS 2013, 2013.

[18] Ali Koudri, Christophe Guychard, Sylvain Guérin, Antoine Beugnard, Joël Champeau, and Fabien Dagnat. De la nécessité de fédérer des modèles dans une chaîne d’outils. In Génie logiciel, numéro 105, volume 105, pages 18–23, 2013.

PhD Thesis

I completed in 2023 my PhD Thesis entitled “FML : a model federation language for semantic interoperability of heterogeneous information sources”.