Prof. Dr. Frank Leymann

Frank Leymann is a full professor of computer science and director of the Institute of Architecture of Application Systems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research interests include service oriented computing and middleware, workflow- and business process management, Cloud Computing, transaction processing, integration technology, and architecture patterns.

Before accepting his professor position he worked for two decades for IBM Software Group building database and middleware products: He built tools supporting conceptual and physical database design for DB2; built performance prediction and monitoring tools for an object database system; was co-architect of a repository system; built both, a universal relation system as well as a complex object database system on top of DB2; and was co-architect of the MQSeries family. In parallel to that, Frank worked continuously since the late eighties on workflow technology and became the father of IBM's workflow product set.

As an IBM Distinguished Engineer and elected member of the IBM Academy of Technology he contributed to the architecture and strategy of IBM's entire middleware stack as well as IBM's On Demand Computing strategy. From 2000 on, Frank worked as co-architect of the Web Service stack. He is co-author of many Web Service specifications, including WSFL, WS-Addressing, WS-Metadata Exchange, WS-Business Agreement, the WS-Resource Framework set of specifications, WS-HumanTask and BPEL4People; together with Satish Thatte, he was the driving force behind BPEL4WS. Also, he is co-author of BPMN 2.0 and TOSCA.

Currently, Frank works on the following third-party funded research projects: For the DFG Excellence Cluster SimTech his group contributes a service-oriented environment for modeling and executing multi-scale simulations. In the DFG Excellence Graduate School GSaME work is done on a service-based environment for adaptive business processes in manufacturing environments. The focus of his work in the Nexus DFG Center of Excellence is in the area of context-aware business processes. New mechanisms for composing SOA-based applications and their embedding into corresponding software engineering methods are subject of the EU FP7 project S-Cube . The development of variable Cloud services and their support by an appropriate PaaS platform is investigated in the EU FP7 project 4CaaSt . Within the BMWi funded project CloudCycle a middleware is developed that supports the portability of Cloud applications as well as ensuring their trust properties. The role of Clouds to ensure ecological policies is investigated within the BMWi funded project Migrate .

Similarly, Frank is active in projects that are directly funded by industry. Topics worked on in these projects are from the area of service- and process-oriented architectures as well as cloud computing.

Finished projects: As Scientific Director of the EU FP6 project SUPER , he set the direction for the whole project which is about combining semantics technology and business process technology. In the EU FP6 project TripCom , his group contributed to combine SOA technoloy and space-based computing. In the BMBF project Tools4BPEL extensions of BPEL for specifying choreographies and their QoS have been worked out. MDA-based mechanisms for ensuring compliance in SOA- and especially in process-based applications were investigated by his team in the EU FP7 project COMPAS . The use of SOA- and process-technologies for preventing violations of security assertions has been the focus in the EU FP7 project MASTER . Within the EU FP7 project ALLOW the focus of research is on enabling the adaptability of flows as basis for building applications in pervasive environments.

Frank published many papers in journals and proceedings, co-authored three text books, and holds a multitude of patents especially in the area of workflow management and transaction processing. He served on program committees and organization committees of many international conferences, and he is (associated) editor of a couple of journals. Since 2006 he is member of the scientific directorate of Schloss Dagstuhl (Leibniz Center of Computer Science).

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