Investigador Distinguido (Generalitat Valenciana, Plan GenT2) at the Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN), Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.
Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, UK. European Doctorate in Computer Science. Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I work on trustworthy software engineering with AI. As AI agents take on more of the writing of software, we need ways to show that the result does what it is meant to do. My approach is assurance-by-design: contract-centric specifications and machine-checkable evidence, validated in digital health.
My research combines three areas:
- Model-based software engineering: models as the precise description of what software should do, with model transformation and code generation to build it. I develop YAMTL and EMF-Syncer, award-winning tools at the Transformation Tool Contest.
- Formal methods: specification and automated analysis of software models, so that guarantees can be checked by machine.
- Agentic AI: bringing AI agents into software development in ways that can be checked and audited.
Digital health is where the three meet in practice, from the ESA-funded Personalised Space Technology Exercise Platform (P-STEP) to the formal composition of clinical guidelines for patients with multiple long-term conditions.
Background
In October 2026 I joined VRAIN as a member of Santiago Escobar’s formal methods group, returning to the university where I studied.
Before that I spent nineteen years at the University of Leicester (UK). I joined as Lecturer in 2007 and was Associate Professor at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences until September 2026. From 2018 to 2023 I was Director of the undergraduate programmes in Computer Science and Software Engineering. I remain connected to the School as Honorary Associate Professor.
My research at Leicester was funded by Innovate UK, EPSRC and the European Space Agency. In P-STEP I was Co-I and technical lead of the informatics team. I am a founding member of the EPSRC-funded MDENet, the expert network for model-driven engineering.
I studied at the Universitat Politècnica de València: BSc in Computer Science in 2002 (Ingeniero en Informática), with an award from Bancaixa/Bancaja for the final year project on data migration, Master’s thesis (DEA) in 2004 and PhD in Computer Science in 2007 (Doctor Cum Laude). I have been a visiting researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain).
I am glad to hear from researchers, companies and prospective PhD students working on related problems.
News
- Oct 2026 — Invited keynote at MEDIC 2026, the 1st International Workshop on Model Engineering for Digital Innovation in Healthcare, at MODELS 2026 (Málaga, 6 October): Assurance-by-Design for Evolving Clinical Software: Where Obligations Belong.
- Oct 2026 — Paper at MODELS 2026 (New Ideas and Emerging Results track, Málaga): Measure What Survives: When Model Vocabulary Outlives Generated Code.
- Oct 2026 — Joined the Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN), Universitat Politècnica de València, as Investigador Distinguido (Generalitat Valenciana, Plan GenT2), in Santiago Escobar’s formal methods group.
- Oct 2026 — Appointed Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Leicester.
- Apr 2026 — Paper presented at FASE 2026 (ETAPS, Turin): Composing Clinical Activity Guidance for Multimorbidity via Bounded Relational Analysis (DOI).
- Apr 2026 — Paper presented at WRLA 2026 (ETAPS, Turin): Bounded Structural Model Finding with Symbolic Data Constraints.
- Mar 2026 — Invited talk at the LLHRG Showcasing and Networking Event, Leicester Tigers Rugby Club: Composing Clinical Activity Guidance for Multimorbidity via Bounded Relational Analysis.
Contact: UPV profile · GitHub · LinkedIn · ORCID · Google Scholar · DBLP · SlideShare
Address: Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camí de Vera s/n, 46022 València, Spain