Responsible Automation and Applied Informatics

• Engineering Self-Adaptive Systems and the Role of AI: Case Studies, Research Challenges and Results
• Facts and Trends in Research and Education at York University
  
  Short Bio: Marin Litoiu is a Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in the School of Information Technology, York University. He is also a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Dr. Litoiu leads the Adaptive Software Research Lab and focuses on making large software systems more versatile, resilient, energy-efficient, self-healing, and self-optimizing. His research won many awards, including the IBM Canada CAS Research Project of the Year Award,  the IBM CAS Faculty Fellow of the Year Award for his “impact on IBM people, processes and technology,” three Best Paper Awards, and two Most Influential Paper Awards.  Prior to joining York University, Dr. Litoiu was a Research Staff member with the Centre for Advanced Studies in the IBM Toronto Lab, where he led the research programs in software engineering and autonomic computing. He received the Canada NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation in recognition for these collaborative university/industry activities. He was also the recipient of the IBM Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for his research vision on Cloud Computing. Dr. Litoiu is one of the founders of the SEAMS Symposium series—ACM/IEEE Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems. He has been the General Chair of SEAMS in 2013 and 2019, ACSOS 2023, ICPE 2025,  Program Chair of SEAMS, ICPE, and CASCON, and serves on the steering committees of  SEAMS and CASCON.  Dr. Litoiu is also the Scientific Director of „Dependable Internet of Things Applications (DITA),” an NSERC CREATE program.

• Towards Autonomous Systems: Flexible Modular Production System Enhanced with LLM Agents
  
  Short Bio: Professor Weyrich is head of the Institute for Automation and Software Engineering at the University of Stuttgart. He researches and teaches in the area of industrial information technology for automation. His research interests include intelligent automation components, autonomous systems, and automation safety. He studied at the Universities of Saarbrücken, Bochum, and London and received his PhD from RWTH Aachen. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian University TUDon. Before joining the university, he worked in the multinational industry for 10 years, including 4 years in Asia. He is Vice-Chairman of the VDI/VDE Society for Measurement and Automation Technology and a member of the VDE Executive Board. He holds several positions, e.g., head of the VDI/VDE Technical Committee on testing networked systems, director of the Innovation Campus Mobility, industry chair of the International Federation of Control (IFAC) for „Computers for Control”, member of the program committee in the IEEE ETFA conferences, as well as member of the editorial board of the journal ATP edition.

• Navigating the Duality: A Journey Through Responsible GenAI Use, Its Irresponsible Counterpart, and Associated Cybersecurity Implications
  As Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) continues to evolve, its potential applications and associated cybersecurity risks grow increasingly significant. While GenAI holds immense promise for societal advancement, it also introduces novel, sophisticated risks. Notably, the manipulation of GenAI can facilitate advanced social engineering attacks, enhancing their effectiveness by creating unprecedentedly convincing impersonations. This presentation embarks on a journey, exploring the dual nature of GenAI use and its impact on cybersecurity. It illuminates the responsible use of GenAI, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize various sectors through enhanced efficiency and innovation. Simultaneously, it scrutinizes the irresponsible use of GenAI, underscoring the emerging threats it poses. These include the generation of highly persuasive attacks capable of circumventing traditional security measures. Ultimately, this presentation’s goal is to raise awareness, equipping the audience with the basic knowledge to safeguard against becoming victims of these emerging cybersecurity threats enabled by the misuse of the GenAI technology.
  
  Short Bio: Iosif Viorel (Vio) Onut is Associate Partner – Cyber Strategy and Risk & Master Inventor at IBM Security. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa and co-director of the University of Ottawa and IBM Cyber Range. He specializes in cybersecurity and cybercrime research and development. He is also passionate about curriculum and product innovation acceleration through R&D. Over the past decade, he has managed over 150 research projects involving 35 universities, led by over 90 professors, over 360 students, and over 330 IBM staff.

• Workshop on Intelligent Solutions for Manufacturing through IoT (with Prof. Michael Weyrich)
  
  Short Bio: Akshay Kumar Venkatesha Narla is a PhD student at the Institute of Automation and Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on enabling interoperability during dynamic feature integration in the automotive software environment. His research interests include autonomous driving, systems, and software engineering. He completed his Masters degree in INFOTECH from the University of Stuttgart and has 2+ years of working experience as an automotive safety software developer for Bosch India, Bangalore.

• Cybersecurity of Industrial Control Systems
  The lecture will present general concepts for assuring the cybersecurity of industrial control systems (ICS). The Purdue model for ICS cybersecurity will be discussed, alongside the NIST SP800-82r3 guide for operational technology (OT) security. Critical standardization aspects will be covered in the form of the ISO27001 – Management System for Information Security and ISA/IEC 62443 – Industrial cybersecurity families of standards. The current European regulation and certification landscape for essential operators of critical infrastructures (e.g., NIS2 directive) represents a key driver for compliance through technological advances and organizational measures in this area. Case studies are demonstrated in the analysis of industrial communication network logs for attack patterns using dedicated software tools, together with the configuration and testing of specialized hardware systems for ICS protection e.g,. Siemens Scalance S615 with SINEMA VPN and S7-1200/-1500 series PLCs.
  
  Short Bio: Grigore Stamatescu holds the Ph.D. degree (2012) from the University Politehnica of Bucharest, where he is currently a Professor (Habil. 2019) with the Department of Automation and Industrial Informatics, leading the Artificial Intelligence for SEnsing, Low-Power Networking and ICS SEcurity (AISENSE) laboratory. His main research interests currently include the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence for industry and energy applications, and his research results have been published in over 150 articles. Dr. Stamatescu was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar 2015-2016 at the University California, Merced, on distributed sensing and advanced control in smart buildings, and a 2019 JESH Scholar of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Graz University of Technology on data-driven modelling of manufacturing systems. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a 2025-2027 Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society in the field of “Big Measurement Data”.

This workshop is designed to equip participants with both the theoretical foundations and practical skills needed to evaluate the quality of Generative AI output. Through interactive lectures, hands-on exercises, and real-world case studies, attendees will explore key evaluation dimensions such as coherence, relevance, factual accuracy, and completeness. They will learn how to apply human and automated assessment methods, including widely used metrics such as BLEU, ROUGE, BERTScore, and GPTScore. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art methods for assessing Generative AI results, raising their awareness on high-quality, reliable, and ethically sound GenAI outputs.

Speaker: Dr. Alexandru Olteanu
Alexandru Olteanu obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2013, with a thesis focused on Cloud Computing. Since then, he has strengthened his expertise as a software engineer and data engineer, both in industry and academia. Alex has worked as a researcher in several national and international research projects, focusing on future communication networks (Sensei, EUWB, TwisNet), biometrics (SISEB, ATHOS), and balancing energy flows between countries at a regional level (FutureFlow). At the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, within the Department of Computer Science, he teaches courses on Data Structures and Algorithms, Object-Oriented Programming, and Applied Data Analysis. As a consultant for SAP, he has been applying advanced data analysis methods across various industries, including utilities, telecommunications, finance, and the public sector. Currently, Alexandru contributes to the development of SAP solutions for Agentic AI, which aim to solve complex business challenges through autonomous agents.

The workshop will present modern programmable logic controller applications in a comparative approach based on technologies from reputable manufacturers (Siemens, Allen Bradley, Beckhoff, Phoenix Contact, Bosch Rexroth). The IEC 61131-3 standard for PLC software development will be discussed together with key principles in building Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for industrial process monitoring and control. Integration and interoperability aspects for industrial communication using open-source tools will be investigated. Case studies include modelling of a typical industry application using state diagrams and the development of an end-to-end automation project using Siemens TIA Portal technologies.

Speaker: Viorel Mihai
Viorel Mihai is an automation engineer and technical manager of Asti Automation with extensive experience in coordinating automation projects in multiple industry verticals (oil and gas, food industry, utilities, energy).

Leveraging Capabilities of GenAI with IBM Watsonx technology, Speakers: Andra Bichea, Mihai Neagu

IBM Quantum technology – Overview and updates 2025, Speaker: Laurentiu Carata-Dejoianu

Quantum Gates, Speaker: Dr. Valeriu Grossu

QuantumSafe and CyberSecurity, Speaker: Paul Boboc

This one-day workshop offers an introduction to Microsoft Azure. The workshop combines presentations and hands-on labs to build basic knowledge of Azure services, architecture, compute and storage.

Participants will:

• Present an overview of basic cloud concepts and how they are implemented within Azure
• Gain an overview of key Azure concepts, focusing specifically on compute, and storage services
• Use the Azure Portal to navigate services, deploy resources, and manage configurations
• The practice session will focus on deploying virtual machines and storage accounts, demonstrating how to use them together to migrate on-premises workloads to the cloud.

Speaker: Dr. Dorin Ungureanu

Acest workshop explorează modul în care modelele generative de inteligență artificială pot fi utilizate în fluxuri de lucru reale de dezvoltare software, folosind editorul de cod bazat pe inteligență artificială Cursor ca exemplu practic. Participanții vor învăța cum să utilizeze Cursor pentru a accelera sarcinile de programare, cum ar fi finalizarea, editarea și revizuirea codului, toate cu ajutorul inteligenței artificiale care înțelege contextul. Subiectele vor include modul în care Cursor gestionează confidențialitatea, cum adaugă context muncii tale și cum poți personaliza modul în care te ajută. Prin exerciții practice, participanții vor evalua modul în care inteligența artificială se poate integra în mod natural în codarea de zi cu zi.
Speaker: Emil Calofir
Cu 15 ani de experiență în dezvoltare software, dintre care 4 ani în inteligența artificială, Emil Calofir ocupă rolul de Head of AI la eSolutions, unde coordonează integrarea soluțiilor AI în proiectele companiei și îi sprijină pe dezvoltatori să utilizeze instrumente precum Cursor pentru a crește productivitatea, a optimiza fluxurile de lucru și a îmbunătăți calitatea codului.

DevOps: the good, the bad, and the ugly
A day of presentations and hands-on labs, in which Alex will break down how tech like Git, Docker, and Kubernetes fit into an organization’s workflow. By the end of the talk, attendees will gain a clear understanding of what it means to be a software engineer and how to navigate the ever-evolving world of software engineering.
Speaker: Alexandru Dejanu

Agile Development: why use it
A presentation about what Agile development is and how it is implemented. How would a team work on a big project, why do we even need to work on a team in the first place and why do we need the tools most of the big companies use, like GIT, JIRA,  Automated pipeline, pull-requests, and more.
Speaker: Ştefăniță Mitran

Interactive research seminar in conjunction with the summer school, with the participation of PhD students
Prof. Michael Weyrich, Akshay Kumar Venkatesha Narla