Interests

My main research interest is value and value exchanges in service-oriented systems. In my PhD thesis, A Theory of Value for Service Ecosystems, I proposed a new definition of value together with heuristics for the design and analysis of service ecosystems. I also enjoy working on teaching methods for computer science students.

Work-in-Progress Projects

• Privacy Engineering Meets Software Engineering. On the Challenges of Engineering Privacy By Design [draft]: a joint work with Carmela Troncoso and Seda Gürses. We look into the challenges to engineer privacy if the reality of software engineering (i.e., service-oriented architecture and agile development process) is taken into account.

Publications

• Systems-Thinking Heuristics for the Reconciliation of Methodologies for Design and Analysis for Information Systems Engineering. Blagovesta Kostova, Irina Rychkova, Andrey Naumenko, Gil Regev, Alain Wegmann. RCIS 2020 [preprint]
• EVA: An Encrypted Vector Arithmetic Language and Compiler for Efficient Homomorphic Computation. Roshan Dathathri, Blagovesta Kostova, Olli Saarikivi, Wei Dai, Kim Laine, Madan Musuvathi. PLDI 2020 [preprint]
• On the Interplay between Requirements, Engineering, and Artificial Intelligence Blagovesta Kostova, Seda Gürses, Alain Wegmann. RE4AI. REFSQ 2020 [preprint]
• Requirements Elicitation with a Service Canvas for Packaged Enterprise Systems. Blagovesta Kostova, Lucien Etzlinger, David Derrier, Gil Regev, Alain Wegmann. RE 2019 [preprint]
• Comparison of Two Value-Modeling Methods: e³value and SEAM. Blagovesta Kostova, Jaap Gordijn, Gil Regev, Alain Wegmann. RCIS 2019 [preprint]
• Service-Oriented Business Design for IT Students. Blagovesta Pirelli, Alain Wegmann. FiE 2018 [blog post] [preprint]
• Co-Design of Business and IT Services - a Tool-Supported Approach. Blagovesta Pirelli, Natalia Nessler, Alain Wegmann. Data-Driven Business Services. ICSOC 2018 [preprint]
• Technology-Transfer Requirements Engineering (TTRE) - on the Value of Conceptualizing Alternatives. Blagovesta Pirelli, Alain Wegmann. MREBA. ER 2018 [blog post] [preprint]
• Teaching Business Design at an Engineering School–Principles/Patterns/Practice. Blagovesta Kostova, Gorica Tapandjieva, Alain Wegmann. ISPIM 2017
• A Proposition for a Design Method of Service Systems. Blagovesta Kostova. DC. ICSOC 2017 [preprint]

Service

• General Co-Chair of the International Workshop on Privacy and Security in Enterprise Modeling, 2020, 2021 (PriSEM)
• General Co-Chair of the International Workshop on Agility with Microservices Programming (AMP), 2021 (AMP’21)
• Social Media Co-Chair of the International Working Conference on Requirement Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality 2021 (REFSQ’21)
• Social Media Chair of the International Workshop on Privacy Engineering, 2021, 2022 (IWPE)

Teaching

• Software engineering
• Enterprise and service-oriented architecture
• Business design of IT services
• Negotiation techniques
• Organizational behavior
• Supervised >20 Bachelor and Master students

Community work

• President of LauzHack (2017 - 2020), a student association that organizes the LauzHack hackathon, the biggest student-run hackathon in Switzerland.
• Member of PolyProg (2017 - 2019), an association that organizes HC2, the biggest student programming competition in Switzerland.