I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Software Technology Group at TU Dresden. I do software engineering research with a focus on model-driven software engineering, software quality assurance, and human factors — in short: understanding and measuring how teams build complex software together, and building tools that help.
My dissertation, Measuring Consistency in Collaborative Software Engineering, explored tools, methods, and novel metrics to continuously measure inconsistency — merge conflict potential — in software development projects. Most of my research ships with runnable prototypes, and many of them live here on GitHub.
🐟 Karpfen — model-driven statechart execution
My current favorite project: a framework that executes hierarchical state machines over explicit world models. The workflow is built on three DSLs, defined in karpfen-dsl-tools:
- KMeta (
.kmeta) defines the type hierarchy — classes and properties with composition (has) and reference (knows) relations - KModel (
.kmodel) instantiates a concrete world model conforming to a KMeta metamodel - KStates (
.kstates) attaches hierarchical statecharts to the model's objects
The karpfen-runtime server executes these statecharts in a tick-based loop with configurable delay and optional execution tracing. A single instance hosts multiple independent execution environments, each with its own model and state machine set. Hierarchical states run with proper state-stack semantics and per-level ENTRY/DO execution, and clients follow along via REST and fine-grained WebSocket subscriptions — down to individual model object properties — using connectors for several languages.
📈 driftool — Git branch inconsistency analysis
Simulates merges between all branches of a repository to quantify its drift — a scalar metric of merge conflict potential — and renders it as a 3D view. Built as part of my dissertation research.
🧩 coconlib — revision system management
A lightweight Kotlin library with a built-in data model for managing complex revision systems, plus a CLI.
- karpfenproject — home of the Karpfen toolkit: runtime, DSL tools, connectors for multiple languages, and a live-tracking observatory dashboard
- convidev-tud — tools and datasets from my research in the DFG collaborative research center CONVIDE, on consistency in cyber-physical systems engineering