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

Book chapters, peer-reviewed

Pastor, O. et al. (2022) 'The LiteStrat modelling method : towards the alignment of strategy and code', in Karagiannis, D. et al. (eds) Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling : Concepts, Methods and ADOxx Tools. Cham: Springer, pp. 141–159. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-93547-4_7.

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M. and Martakos, A. (2025) 'A domain-specific language for specifying requirement patterns for model-driven software development', in 2025 IEEE 33rd International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). IEEE, pp. 314–324. doi: 10.1109/REW66121.2025.00047.
• Gieshoff, A. C. et al. (2025) 'Bridging the communication gap : a pilot course on interdisciplinary requirements engineering', in Hess, A., Susi, A., and Ruiz, M. (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. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-33184.
• Mosquera, D. et al. (2025) 'AI-SQUARE : knowledge graphs for requirements-driven software staging management', in 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. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-36033.
• Mosquera Tobón, J. D. et al. (2023) 'Ontology-based automatic reasoning and NLP for tracing software requirements into models with the OntoTrace tool', in Ferrari, A. and Penzenstadler, B. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality : REFSQ 2023. Cham: Springer, pp. 140–158. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-29786-1_10.
• Noel, R. et al. (2022) 'Stra2Bis : a model-driven method for aligning business strategy and business processes', in Ralyté, J. et al. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. Cham: Springer, pp. 255–270. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-17995-2_18.
• Mosquera, D. et al. (2022) 'OntoTrace : a tool for supporting trace generation in software development by using ontology-based automatic reasoning', in De Weerdt, J. and Polyvyanyy, A. (eds) Intelligent Information Systems. Cham: Springer, pp. 73–81. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-07481-3_9.
• Wahler, M. et al. (2022) 'Rapid software prototyping from business artifacts', in Bera, P., Dalpiaz, F., and Wautelet, Y. (eds) Short Paper Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Agile Methods for Information Systems Engineering (Agil-ISE 2022). Aachen: RWTH Aachen University, pp. 9–14. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-25019.
• Mosquera, D., Martakos, A. and Ruiz, M. (2022) 'Experiences from developing a web crawler using a model-driven development tool : emerging opportunities', in Augusto, A. et al. (eds) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. Cham: Springer, pp. 336–343. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-07475-2_23.
• Mosquera, D. et al. (2022) 'Assisted-modeling requirements for model-driven development tools', in Guizzardi, R., Ralyté, J., and Franch, X. (eds) Research Challenges in Information Science. Cham: Springer, pp. 458–474. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-05760-1_27.
• Franch, X. and Ruiz, M. (2021) 'Goal-oriented models for teaching and understanding data structures', in Ghose, A. et al. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. Cham: Springer, pp. 227–241. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-89022-3_19.
• Noel, R. et al. (2021) 'Beyond conventional model-driven development : from strategy to code', in Ruiz, M., Li, T., and Pant, V. (eds) 14th International iStar Workshop 2021. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pp. 49–55. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-24373.
• Noel, R. et al. (2021) 'The LiteStrat method : towards strategic model-driven development', in Insfran, E. et al. (eds) ISD2021 Proceedings. Valencia: Universitat Politècnica de València. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2021/managingdevops/11/.
• Moretti, G., Ruiz, M. and Spielberger, J. (2020) 'Improving performance and scalability of model-driven generated web applications : an experience report', in Research Challenges in Information Science. Cham: Springer, pp. 285–301. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-50316-1_17.
• Ruiz, M. and Hasselmann, B. (2020) 'Can we design software as we talk? : a research idea', in Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. Cham: Springer, pp. 327–334. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-49418-6_22.
• Ruiz, M., Ralyté, J. and Franch, X. (2020) 'The use of iStar in Situational Method Engineering : an ongoing study', in Guizzardi, R., Mussbacher, G., and Ruiz, M. (eds) Thirteenth International iStar Workshop. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pp. 37–42. doi: 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), pp. 52–57. Available at: https://www.alumni-zhaw.ch/data/documents/2022/03/22/4353-6239b13e39106.pdf.
• Panichella, S. and Ruiz, M. (2020) 'Requirements-collector : automating requirements specification from elicitation sessions and user feedback', in 2020 IEEE 28th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE). IEEE, pp. 404–407. doi: 10.1109/RE48521.2020.00057.

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