Prof. Dr. Monika Ulrike Reif

Work at ZHAW

Position

• Head of Research/Focus Area Safety Critical Systems Research Lab
• Professor of Safety Critical Systems
• Lectures in Safety and Systems Engineering, RAMS, Mathematics and Physics
• Applied Research on Safety Critical Systems

Focus

• Safety and Certification of Artificial Intelligence (Safe AI)
• Safety of autonomous Systems
• Functional Safety ISO26262, DIN EN 5012x, IEC 61508
• Reliability, Availability and Safety (RAMS) of complex programmable Systems (E/E/PE systems)
• Reliability and Availability of mechanical Systems

Teaching

Lectures in Safety and Systems Engineering, RAMS, Mathematics and Physics

Professional development teaching

• WBK Funktionale Sicherheit
• CAS Safe and Secure AI – Standards, Methods and Best Practices

Experience

• Co-Head of the Safety Critical Systems Research Lab; Professor of Safety-Critical Systems
  ZHAW
  06 / 2023 - today
• Senior Lecturer in the Safety Critical Systems Research Lab
  ZHAW
  03 / 2014 - 05 / 2023
• Safety engineer in the locomotive division
  Bombardier Transportation
  06 / 2012 - 02 / 2014
• Development Engineer Functional Safety Chassis Control Systems
  BMW
  01 / 2007 - 05 / 2012
• Scientific assistent at the Institute of Machine Components (Reliability Engineering)
  University of Stuttgart
  06 / 2003 - 12 / 2006

Education and Continuing education

Education

• Dr. Eng. / Mechanical Engineering, Reliability Engineering
  University of Stuttgart
  06 / 2003 - 10 / 2008
• Dipl. Eng. / Mechanical Engineering
  University of Stuttgart
  08 / 1998 - 05 / 2003

Continuing Education

• IEEE CertifAIEd Authorized Lead Assessor
  IEEE
  04 / 2024
• Certificate for University Didactics
  Universities of Baden-Württemberg
  10 / 2016

Network

Awards

• VDI Ring of Honors
  VDI - The Association of German Engineers
  12 / 2010
• Artur-Fischer-Preis
  Artur-Fischer-Stiftung
  07 / 2003

Projects

• Safe and Automated Logistics Vehicles for all-weather hilly outdoor Environments / Deputy project leader / ongoing
• CHORUS – Coordination of Heterogeneous Actors in Mixed Traffic within CCAM / Project leader / ongoing
• Innovative and Challenging Verification Environments for AI-enabled Autonomous Systems / Project leader / ongoing
• Verification and Validation Framework for Safe Railway AI Systems Across Their Lifecycle / Project leader / ongoing
• AI-based supervision System for Ropeway Systems / Deputy project leader / ongoing
• Certification program for assessing ethics of Autonomous Intelligent Systems (IEEE CertifAIEd Assessor Training) / Team member / completed
• Simulation tool for autonomous railway systems / Project leader / completed
• certAInty – A Certification Scheme for AI systems / Team member / completed
• Triggering conditions for autonomous cars / Team member / completed
• Sensitivity Analysis / Deputy project leader / completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

Difrancesco, S. et al. (2025) 'Collaborative design and development of a patient-centered digital health app for supportive cancer care : participatory study', JMIR Human Factors, 12(e73829). doi: 10.2196/73829.

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Frischknecht-Gruber, C. et al. (2025) 'AI assessment in practice : implementing a certification scheme for AI trustworthiness', in Görge, R. et al. (eds) Symposium on Scaling AI Assessments (SAIA 2024). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, pp. 15:1–15:18. doi: 10.4230/OASIcs.SAIA.2024.15.
• Frischknecht-Gruber, C. and Reif, M. U. (2024) 'Advancing artificial intelligence systems : alife and generative model applications', in 34th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL), Cracow, Poland, 23-27 June 2024.
• Denzel, P. et al. (2024) 'Towards the certification of AI-based systems', in 2024 11th IEEE Swiss Conference on Data Science (SDS). IEEE, pp. 84–91. doi: 10.1109/SDS60720.2024.00020.
• Billeter, Y. et al. (2024) 'MLOps as enabler of trustworthy AI', in 2024 11th IEEE Swiss Conference on Data Science (SDS). IEEE, pp. 37–40. doi: 10.1109/SDS60720.2024.00013.
• Brunner, S., Reif, M. U. and Senn, C. (2024) 'Deep Ensemble Novelty Detection : novelty detection and fault identification in multivariate data', in Yang, XS. et al. (eds) Proceedings of Ninth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Singapore: Springer, pp. 443–461. doi: 10.1007/978-981-97-3302-6_36.
• Brunner, S., Reif, M. U. and Rejzek, M. (2024) 'Improving resilience and robustness in artificial intelligence systems through adversarial training and verification', in Kołowrocki, K. and Dąbrowska, E. (eds) Advances in Reliability, Safety and Security, Part 4. Gdynia: Polish Safety and Reliability Association, pp. 39–48. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-30985.
• Weng, J. et al. (2024) 'Certification scheme for artificial intelligence based systems', in 34th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL), Cracow, Poland, 23-27 June 2024. ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-30549.
• Frischknecht-Gruber, C. et al. (2023) 'Ensuring safety in highly automated vehicles : a review of testing and validation methods for robustness and reliability', in Brito, M. P. et al. (eds) Proceeding of the 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference. Singapore: Research Publishing, pp. 257–264. doi: 10.3850/978-981-18-8071-1_P414-cd.
• Brunner, S. et al. (2023) 'A comprehensive framework for ensuring the trustworthiness of AI systems', in Brito, M. P. et al. (eds) Proceeding of the 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference. Singapore: Research Publishing, pp. 2772–2779. doi: 10.3850/978-981-18-8071-1_P230-cd.
• Brunner, S. et al. (2022) 'Deep Gaussian mixture model : a novelty detection method for time series', in Leva, M. C. et al. (eds) Proceedings of the 32nd European Safety and Reliability Conference. Singapore: Research Publishing, pp. 1291–1298. doi: 10.3850/978-981-18-5183-4_R22-12-325-cd.
• Frischknecht-Gruber, C., Reif, M. U. and Senn, C. (2022) 'Global efforts towards establishing safety directives for intelligent systems : review', in Proceedings of the 32nd European Safety and Reliability Conference. Singapore: Research Publishing, pp. 2420–2427. Available at: https://rpsonline.com.sg/rps2prod/esrel22-epro/pdf/S11-11-472.pdf.
• Antille, Y. S. and Reif, M. U. (2022) 'Designing a driverless system architecture', in Yang, X.-S. et al. (eds) Proceedings of Seventh International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Singapore: Springer, pp. 499–507. doi: 10.1007/978-981-19-2397-5_46.
• Doran, H. D. et al. (2020) 'Conceptual design of human-drone communication in collaborative environments', in 2020 50th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W). IEEE, pp. 118–121. doi: 10.1109/DSN-W50199.2020.00030.
• Reif, M. U., Weng, J. and Zaugg, C. (2020) 'Global sensitivity analysis of input variables for a train accident risk model', in Baraldi, P., Di Maio, F., and Zio, E. (eds) Proceedings of the 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference and 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference. Singapore: Research Publishing, pp. 4923–4928. Available at: https://www.rpsonline.com.sg/proceedings/esrel2020/pdf/3879.pdf.
• Doran, H. D. and Reif, M. U. (2020) 'Examining redundancy in the context of safe machine learning', in Proceedings of the Forum for Safety & Security 2020. WEKA. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-20248.

Other publications

• Frischknecht-Gruber, C. et al. (2025) 'Assessment tool for trustworthy AI systems : operational workflows for compliance assessment with regulatory requirements', in AI Days @ HES-SO, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, 27–29 January 2025. ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-32422.
• Weng, J. et al. (2023) 'certAInty : a certification scheme for AI systems (Innosuisse project)', in Datalab Symposium, Winterthur, Schweiz, 11. Januar 2023. ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-27261.
• Frischknecht-Gruber, C., Krauss, S. S. and Reif, M. U. (2018) 'STPA-STRIDE : Safety & Security Analyse für komplexe Systeme', in Safe.tech 2018, München, Deutschland, 24.-25. April 2018.
• Wirth, P. and Reif, M. U. (2018) Sicherheit von autonomem Fahren. Edited by C. Hilbes. Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3689.
• Krauss, S. S., Rejzek, M. and Reif, M. U. (2016) Towards a modeling language for Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) : Proposal for a domain specific language (DSL) for model driven Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) based on UML. Edited by C. Hilbes. Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-1175.
• Reif, M. U. et al. (2015) 'Sicherheitsgerichtet entwickeln mit STPA', Design & Elektronik, 2015(9), pp. 37–41.

Oral conference contributions and abstracts

• Brunner, S., Reif, M. U. and Rejzek, M. (2025) 'Increasing trust in medical AI systems through systematic verification : a framework for developing and verification of responsible AI', in AI Days @ HES-SO, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, 27–29 January 2025.
• Denzel, P. et al. (2023) 'A framework for assessing and certifying explainability of health-oriented AI systems', in Explainable AI in Medicine Workshop, Lugano, Switzerland, 2-3 November 2023.
• Lobsiger, C. et al. (2022) 'Portables Onboard Zugbeeinflussungssystem für den kostengünstigen Einsatz in Fahrzeugen mit kurzen Einsatzzeiten', in Safe.tech 2022, München, Deutschland, 10.-11. Mai 2022.
• Reif, M. U. and Krauss, S. S. (2019) 'Safety und Security Analyse für vernetzte autonome Systeme', in 9. Tagung Automatisiertes Fahren, München (Deutschland), 21.-22. November 2019.
• Frischknecht-Gruber, C. et al. (2018) 'Safety & cyber-security analysis based on systems-theory', in International Cross-Industry Safety Conference and European STAMP Workshop and Conference 2018, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 31 October - 2 November 2018.
• Reif, M. U., Krauss, S. S. and Frischknecht-Gruber, C. (2018) 'An approach to analyse functional safety, security and SOTIF based on a comprehensive analysis technique', in ISO 26262 - 2nd edition, Autonomous Driving & Cybersecurity, Stuttgart, Germany, 22-24 October 2018.
• Krauss, S. S. et al. (2017) 'CAST analysis of a railroad accident in Switzerland', in 5th European STAMP/STPA Workshop and Conference, Reykjavik, Iceland, 13-15 September 2017.
• Reif, M. U. (2017) 'Risikoanalyse leicht gemacht – Gefahren identifizieren und beurteilen', in Eurolabs: Welche Risiken bestehen für die Unparteilichkeit Ihres Labors?, Dübendorf, 2. November 2017. SNV-Academy.
• Krauss, S. S. et al. (2016) 'STPA - Sicherheitsanalyse für komplexe Systeme', in Safe.tech 2016, München, Deutschland, 26.-27. April 2016.
• Reif, M. U. et al. (2015) 'Sicherheitsgerichtete Entwicklung mit Hilfe von STPA und codeBeamer', in Forum Funktionale Sicherheit, Munich, Germany, 7-9 July 2015.

Publications before appointment at the ZHAW

• Trost, M: Gesamtheitliche Anlagenmodellierung und -analyse auf Basis stochastischer Netzverfahren. Dissertation 2008, Universität Stuttgart, Institutsbericht Nr. 128. (Holistic Modelling and Analysis of Production Facilities based on Stochastic Nets).
• Trost, M.; Jäger, P.; Bertsche, B.: Realitätsnahe Analyse und Verbesserung von Instandhaltungsprozessen. AKIDA 2006, Aachen, 14.-15.11.2006.
• Trost, M.; Nebel, S.; Bertsche, B.: An Approach to Integrate Uncertainties in Petri Nets to Evaluate the Worthiness of Repair. ESREL 2006-Conference, Estoril, Portugal, 18. - 22.09.2006.
• Trost, M.; Nebel, S.; Bertsche, B.: Modellierungs- und Simulationsumgebung REALIST. EKA 2006, Braunschweig, 29.-31.05.2006.
• Trost, M.: Modellierung und Analyse eines Logistikszenarios einer Ersatzteilversorgung. VDI-Seminar „Neue Methoden in der Zuverlässigkeitstechnik“, Hamburg, 04.-05.04.2006.
• Müller, J.; Trost, M.: Tutorial Petrinetze – Grundlagen, Modellierungsaspekte, Beispiele. VDI-Seminar „Neue Methoden in der Zuverlässigkeitstechnik“, Hamburg, 04.-05.04.2006.
• Jäger, P.; Trost, M. Bertsche, B.: A new Approach to Evaluate the Worthiness of Repair. RAMS 2006 Conference, Newport Beach, CA, USA, 23.01.-26.01.2006.
• Trost, M.; Bertsche B.: Optimisation of the Design Process by Means of Availability Modelling. ICED 2005-Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 16.08. – 18.08.2005.
• Trost, M.; Bertsche B.: Petri Net Modeling of Production Systems in Consideration of System Properties, Maintenance and Production Processes. ESREL 2005-Conference, Gdansk, Poland, 27.07. – 30.07.2005.
• Trost, M.; Nebel, S.; Pozsgai, P.; Bertsche B.: Modellierung komplexer Systeme mit Hilfe stochastischer Netzverfahren. TTZ 2005, Stuttgart, 07./08.04.2005.

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