Prof. Dr. Marcela Ruiz

Work at ZHAW

Position

• Head of Research Group Software Engineering
• Senior Lecturer and Researcher with focus on Design of Methods, tools and techniques for Low-Code No-Code Software Development

Focus

Development of Low-Code No-Code Tools for Software Development

Network

ORCID digital identifier

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0592-1779

Social media

LinkedIn

Media presence

Interview by ZHAW Digital on DIZH Fellowship, Thursday, 29 April 2021: When a discussion leads to developing a software [Link to interview: www.zhaw.ch/en/about-us/news/news-releases/news-detail/event-news/wenn-durchs-sprechen-software-entsteht/]

Projects

• Sensory Reweighting, Muscle Synergies and Triggers for Freezing of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease / Team member / ongoing
• AI-SQUARE: Integrated Decision-Support Platform for Software Staging in DevOps / Project leader / ongoing
• Machine Learning for Software User Interface Testing / Project leader / completed
• Exploiting User Journeys and Testing Automation for Supporting Efficient Energy Service Platforms / Team member / completed
• DevOps for Complex Cyber-physical Systems of Systems / Team member / completed
• Can virtual reality systems help us to design software as we talk? / Project leader / completed
• Interscriber: Turning Dialogues into Actionable Insights / Project leader / completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., & Pastor, O. (2025). Ontology-based NLP tool for tracing software requirements and conceptual models : an empirical study. Requirements Engineering, 30(3), 341–369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-025-00447-4
• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., Pastor, O., & Spielberger, J. (2024). Understanding the landscape of software modelling assistants for MDSE tools : a systematic mapping. Information and Software Technology, 173(107492). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107492
• Ruiz, M., Hu, J. Y., & Dalpiaz, F. (2023). Why don’t we trace? : a study on the barriers to software traceability in practice. Requirements Engineering, 28(4), 619–637. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-023-00408-9
• Díaz, E., Panach, J. I., Rueda, S., Ruiz, M., & Pastor, O. (2020). Are requirements elicitation sessions influenced by participants’ gender? : an empirical experiment. Science of Computer Programming, 204(102595). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2020.102595

Book chapters, peer-reviewed

Pastor, O., Noel, R., Panach, I., & Ruiz, M. (2022). The LiteStrat modelling method : towards the alignment of strategy and code. In D. Karagiannis, L. Moonkun, K. Hinkelmann, & W. Utz (Eds.), Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling : Concepts, Methods and ADOxx Tools (pp. 141–159). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93547-4_7

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., & Martakos, A. (2025). A domain-specific language for specifying requirement patterns for model-driven software development [Conference paper]. 2025 IEEE 33rd International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW), 314–324. https://doi.org/10.1109/REW66121.2025.00047
• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., Mann, O., & Hanin, M. (2025, April 7). AI-SQUARE : knowledge graphs for requirements-driven software staging management. Joint Proceedings of REFSQ 2025 Workshops, Doctoral Symposium, Posters & Tools Track, and Education and Training Track Co-Located with 31st International Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2025). https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-36033
• Gieshoff, A. C., Ruiz, M., Schuler, M., & Wahler, M. (2025). Bridging the communication gap : a pilot course on interdisciplinary requirements engineering [Conference paper]. In A. Hess, A. Susi, & M. Ruiz (Eds.), Joint Proceedings of REFSQ 2025 Workshops, Doctoral Symposium, Posters & Tools Track, and Education and Training Track co-located with 31st International Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-33184
• Mosquera Tobón, J. D., Ruiz, M., Pastor, O., & Spielberger, J. (2023). Ontology-based automatic reasoning and NLP for tracing software requirements into models with the OntoTrace tool [Conference paper]. In A. Ferrari & B. Penzenstadler (Eds.), Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality : REFSQ 2023 (pp. 140–158). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_10
• Noel, R., Panach, J. I., Ruiz, M., & Pastor, O. (2022). Stra2Bis : a model-driven method for aligning business strategy and business processes [Conference paper]. In J. Ralyté, S. Chakravarthy, M. Mohania, M. A. Jeusfeld, & K. Karlapalem (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling (pp. 255–270). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17995-2_18
• Wahler, M., Conte, E., Frick, M., Mosquera, D., & Ruiz, M. (2022). Rapid software prototyping from business artifacts [Conference paper]. In P. Bera, F. Dalpiaz, & Y. Wautelet (Eds.), Short Paper Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agile Methods for Information Systems Engineering (Agil-ISE 2022) (Vol. 3134, pp. 9–14). RWTH Aachen University. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-25019
• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., Pastor, O., Spielberger, J., & Fievet, L. (2022). OntoTrace : a tool for supporting trace generation in software development by using ontology-based automatic reasoning [Conference paper]. In J. De Weerdt & A. Polyvyanyy (Eds.), Intelligent Information Systems (pp. 73–81). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07481-3_9
• Mosquera, D., Martakos, A., & Ruiz, M. (2022). Experiences from developing a web crawler using a model-driven development tool : emerging opportunities [Conference paper]. In A. Augusto, A. Gill, D. Bork, S. Nurcan, I. Reinhartz-Berger, & R. Schmidt (Eds.), Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling (pp. 336–343). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07475-2_23
• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., Pastor, O., & Spielberger, J. (2022). Assisted-modeling requirements for model-driven development tools [Conference paper]. In R. Guizzardi, J. Ralyté, & X. Franch (Eds.), Research Challenges in Information Science (pp. 458–474). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05760-1_27
• Franch, X., & Ruiz, M. (2021). Goal-oriented models for teaching and understanding data structures [Conference paper]. In A. Ghose, J. Horkoff, V. E. Silva Souza, J. Parsons, & J. Evermann (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling (pp. 227–241). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89022-3_19
• Noel, R., Ruiz, M., Panach, I., & Pastor, O. (2021). Beyond conventional model-driven development : from strategy to code [Conference paper]. In M. Ruiz, T. Li, & V. Pant (Eds.), 14th International iStar Workshop 2021 (pp. 49–55). CEUR Workshop Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-24373
• Noel, R., Panach, I., Ruiz, M., & Pastor, O. (2021). The LiteStrat method : towards strategic model-driven development [Conference paper]. In E. Insfran, F. González, S. Abrahão, M. Fernández, C. Barry, M. Lang, H. Linger, & C. Schneider (Eds.), ISD2021 Proceedings. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2021/managingdevops/11/
• Moretti, G., Ruiz, M., & Spielberger, J. (2020). Improving performance and scalability of model-driven generated web applications : an experience report [Conference paper]. Research Challenges in Information Science, 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50316-1_17
• Ruiz, M., & Hasselmann, B. (2020). Can we design software as we talk? : a research idea [Conference paper]. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, 327–334. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49418-6_22
• Ruiz, M., Ralyté, J., & Franch, X. (2020). The use of iStar in Situational Method Engineering : an ongoing study [Conference paper]. In R. Guizzardi, G. Mussbacher, & M. Ruiz (Eds.), Thirteenth International iStar Workshop (pp. 37–42). CEUR Workshop Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-24495

Other publications

• Ruiz, M. (2022). Speeding up digital transformation by automating software development. Mitteilungen : Mitteilungen Der Alumni ZHAW, Engineering & Architecture, 72, 52–57. https://www.alumni-zhaw.ch/data/documents/2022/03/22/4353-6239b13e39106.pdf
• Panichella, S., & Ruiz, M. (2020). Requirements-collector : automating requirements specification from elicitation sessions and user feedback [Conference paper]. 2020 IEEE 28th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 404–407. https://doi.org/10.1109/RE48521.2020.00057

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