Benoit Combemale

Resarch Director
Full Professor of Software Engineering

Inria & University of Rennes

I am currently Research Director at Inria, on leave from my position of Full Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Rennes. I am evolving within the research team DiverSE, joint to the CNRS Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems (IRISA) and Inria. I am also adjunct researcher in the SM@RT team of the CNRS Research Institute in Computer Science of Toulouse (IRIT), Scientific Advisor at TwiinIT and Myrmix and Editor-in-Chief of the Springer-Nature journal about Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM). More information in my complete bio.

Interests

Model-Driven Engineering
Software Language Engineering
Domain-Specific Languages
Software-Product Lines
Software Validation & Verification
Digital Twins
ICT for Sustainability

Education

Habilitation in Software Engineering, 2015

University of Rennes
PhD in Software Engineering, 2008

University of Toulouse - INPT ENSEEIHT
M.Sc. in Computer Science, 2005

University of Toulouse - UPS

Teaching

I teach software engineering in the Computer Science Department ( ISTIC M2 IL) of the University of Rennes (UR), and frequently give invited lectures and complete courses in various universities and engineering schools worldwide. More specifically, I teach in the following areas:

Object-Oriented Modeling and Programming
Validation and Verification (V&V), Software testing
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE)
Software Language Engineering (SLE)
Model-Based Systems Engineering
Sustainable Digitalization

Research

My research activities lie in Software and Systems Engineering, focusing on agility and safety within the development of software-intensive systems. In our group, we develop techniques, frameworks, and environments to facilitate the creation, integration, and automated processing of software languages. The main application domains include sustainability systems, cyber-physical systems, Internet of things, embedded systems, smart technologies, and scientific computing.

In particular, we contribute to the following fields:

Model-Driven (software and systems) Engineering
Software Language Engineering, Domain Specific (Modeling) Languages, Generative approaches
Software variability, and Product Line Engineering
Dynamically adaptive systems
Digital Twins
Software Validation & Verification, Software testing, Modeling & Simulation
Resilience Engineering, and DevOps
Software Engineering for Scientific Computing
Sustainable Digitalization, and ICT for Sustainability
Software Development Process & Business Process Management

Want to hack languages yourself? I have open positions and I am always looking for talented and motivated persons who want to join us for an internship, a PhD, a Post-doc, or a research visit. Feel free to contact me.

Students

Since 2009, I have very much enjoyed collaborating with (and learned from) the following PhD and MSc students.

Imene Issolah "Towards a Digital Twin for Water Resource Management" , since May, 2025. IRIS-E project ANIME-WATER. Co-supervisor: D. Khelladi and J.-R. de Dreuzy.

Jean-Baptiste Doderlein "Live Programming for Continuous Software Engineering" , since Sep, 2025. Co-supervisors: D. Khelladi.

Lina Bilal "Model-Based DevOps" , since Oct, 2023. ANF/DFG Project MBDO. Co-supervisor: J.-M. Jézéquel.

Philemon Houdaille "Polyglot program testing" , since Oct, 2023. Co-supervisors: D. Khelladi, and G. Mussbacher.

Ewen Brune "Testing framework for scientific computing" , since Oct, 2023. Co-supervisors: D. Leroy and and A. Blouin.

Bastien Sauvat "Rust-based Language Servers" , Aug 15, 2023. ENS. Co-supervisors D. Khelladi and P. Houdaille.

Philemon Houdaille "Testing Polyglot Applications" , Aug 15, 2023. ENS. Co-supervisor D. Khelladi.

Arthur Allain "Usability functions for low-code language workbenches" , Aug 15, 2023. ENS. Co-supervisors A. Blouin and T. Giraudet.

Jean-Baptiste Doderlein "Language Models" , Aug 15, 2022. University of Rennes 1. Co-supervisor M. Acher and D. Khelladi.

Romain Briend "Polyglot Programming" , Aug 15, 2022. University of Rennes 1. Co-supervisor D. Khelladi.

Jean-Baptiste Doderlein "SpaceTiming Programming" , Jul 31, 2025. University of Rennes 1. Co-supervisor M. Acher and D. Khelladi.

Philemon Houdaille "Polyglot Live Programming" , Aug 15, 2021. University of Rennes 1. Co-supervisor D. Khelladi.

Romain Lefeuvre "Smart DevOps" , since Sep, 2023. Co-supervisors: Q. Perez and J. Galasso-Carbonnel.

Anne Bumiller "Beyond Risk Scores: Context-Aware Adaptive Authentication" , Nov 9, 2023. Co-supervisors: O. Barais and S. Challita.

Gwendal Jouneaux "Self-Adaptive Languages" , Sep 25, 2024. Co-supervisors: O. Barais and G. Mussbacher.

Gwendal Jouneaux "Self-Adaptable Virtual Machines" , since Sep, 2019. University of Rennes 1.

Emmanuel Chebbi , since Oct, 2019. Grant from DGA and Britanny region. Co-supervisors: G. Leguernic and S. Ebersold.

June Sallou "On Scientific Integrity and Flexibility of Scientific Software in Environmental Sciences: Towards a Systematic Approach to Support Decision-Making." , Feb 23, 2022. Co-supervisors J. Bourcier and J.-R. de Dreuzy.

Théo Giraudet "Collaborative Platform for Heterogeneous Modeling" , since Oct, 2022. Co-supervisors: A. Blouin and Obeo.

Pierre Jeanjean "IDE as Code : Reifying Language Protocols as First-Class Citizens" , Apr 29, 2022. Co-advisor: O. Barais..

Pierre Jeanjean "Towards unpredictable languages" , Oct 1, 2018. INPT ENSEEIHT, in collaboration with KTH. Co-supervisor B. Baudry and N. Harrand (paper).

Fabien Coulon "Towards flexible Integrated Development Environment" , Mar 3, 2022. Project Kaulua, CIFRE grant with Obeo.

Dorian Leroy "Behavioral Typing for the Dynamic Analysis of Executable DSLs" , Mar 25, 2022. Funded by the Austrian Tetrabox project. Co-supervision with Manuel Wimmer and Erwan Bousse at TU Wien.

Manuel Leduc "On modularity and performances of external domain-specific language implementations" , Dec 12, 2019. Grant from the Pôle d’Excellence Cyber. Co-advisor: O. Barais and G. Leguernic (thesis).

Marcelino Rodriguez Cancio "Contributions on Approximate Computing Techniques and How to Measure Them" , Dec 19, 2017. Project Clarity. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (thesis).

Thomas Degueule "Composition and Interoperability for External Domain-Specific Language Engineering" , Dec 12, 2016. Project ITEA2 project MERgE. Co-supervisor O. Barais and A. Blouin (thesis).

David Méndez Acuña "Leveraging Software Product Lines Engineering in the Construction of Domain Specific Languages" , Dec 16, 2016. Projects Marie Curie ITN Relate and Thales-Inria Collaboration VaryMDE. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (thesis).

Erwan Bousse "Execution Trace Management to Support Dynamic V&V for Executable DSMLs" , Dec 3, 2015. French Government Grant. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (thesis).

Erwan Bousse "Requirements management led by formal verification" , Aug 1, 2012. University of Rennes 1 and INSA Rennes, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe (MERCE). Co-supervisor B. Baudry and D. Mentré (MoDeVVa'12 paper).

Jonathan Marchand "Formal and tool-supported operator for multi-formalism modelling" , Aug 1, 2011. University of Rennes 1 and ENS Cachan. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (MiSE'12 paper).

Emmanuelle Rouillé "Variability management and automation of software development processes" , Apr 16, 2014. CIFRE at Sodifrance. Co-supervisor O. Barais and J.-M. Jézéquel (thesis).

Clément Guy "Typing facilities for language engineering" , Dec 10, 2013. French Government Grant. Co-supervisor S. Derrien and J.-M. Jézéquel (thesis).

André Fonseca "Coping with Modular Modelling in fUML" , Jul 1, 2010. University of Rennes 1. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (report).

Darlam Bender "PLC programs modeling and formal verification using MDE and Ladder Diagrams" , Aug 1, 2008. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Co-supervisor B. Baudry (ECMFA'08 paper).

Publications

See the list of all my publications on Google Scholar, DBLP, or my CV. You can also access all the preprints from HAL.

Talks

Here is a list of my presentations (invited talks, seminars and keynotes). Most of the recent slide decks are available from my SlideShare account.

Software

I am involving into the following software projects:

SciHook, a Python and C++ instrumentation library for scientific computing.
The GEMOC Studio, a language workbench for language executability, assembling and globalization. The GEMOC Studio includes, among others:
- Action Language for EMF (ALE), to make Ecore metamodels executable.
- Sirius Animator, to bring execution, debug and simulation in domain specific tooling built with EMF.
- Model of Concurrency and Communication Modeling Language (MoCCML), to reify a formal model of concurrency in executable modeling languages.
- Behavioral Coordination Operator Language (BCOoL), to explicitly specify coordination patterns between heterogeneous languages.
Melange, a language and platform for assembling and integrating multiple domain-specific languages (DSL)

In the past, I involved in:

Kermeta, an executable metamodeling language
Kompren, a generic approach for model slicing
Topcased simulation tools
COQ4MDE, a formal metamodeling framework based on COQ

Services

(all services)

Editor in Chief of the International Journal on Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM) (Springer Nature).
Editorial Board member of the journals JOT, COLA, and SQJ.
Steering Committee member of the ACM SIGPLAN Intl. Conference on Software Language Engineering (since 2014, chair 2018-2022), the ACM SIGSOFT and IEEE Intl. Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, the Intl. Conference on Engineering Digital Twins, and the Intl. Conference on Information and Communications Technology for Sustainability.
General chair for ICT4S 2023, SLE 2017 and MODELS 2016, PC chair for MODELS 2024, ICT4S 2020, ECMFA 2019 and SLE 2014, member of organizing committees and program committees for various Software Engineering conferences.
Funding Member of the steering committee of the International School on Foundations and Advances of Model-Based Engineering (FAME).
Coordinator of the Dagstuhl Seminars 22362, 17342 and 14412, and various McGill’s Bellairs and Winter Modeling workshops.
Founding member and coordinator of the GEMOC Initiative ( Eclipse Research Consortium, Eclipse project, Workshop…).
Member of hiring juries for academic positions, and PhD committees.
Reviewer for different national research agencies.