Biography

• In July 2001, I had my BSc. in Computer Engineering  from Cairo University.
• In  July 2008, I had my MSc. in Computer Engineering from Cairo University.
• In September 2009, I started my PhD program in Computer Science at the University of Surrey. My supervisors are Prof Steve Schneider and Dr Helen Treharne. My funding is coming from the Department of Computing.

Research Interests

Generally, my research interest is to allow software engineers to formally verify safety-critical systems modelled into semi-formal language automatically, without the need for specialist mathematical knowledge. In my Master, I managed to develop a tool (called “UML Inspector") that do the transformation from UML to Z formal representation.The tool then gives the modeller the control to check certain properties against the formal model using ZANS proof checker.

In my PhD, I'm using fUML (Foundational Subset for Executable UML) as a semi-formal model, and CSP as a formal language. We managed to develop a MagicDraw plugin (called "Compass") which uses Epsilon as Model Driven Engineering framework to do an automatic model transformation from fUML to CSP. Compass uses FDR2 to do the model checking and reads the output (counter-example) and converting it back to the user as a UML sequence diagram. Our formalization considers the asynchronous communication between the system's object as defined by the fUML standard.

My current research is in the field of generating more optimized CSP models via applying a group of optimization rules to allow FDR2 to check large/complicated models.

Publications

• Islam Abdelhalim & Steve Schneider, Optimization Rules Mathematical Proofs, Technical Report, University of Surrey, October 2011. (Unpublished).

• Islam Abdelhalim, Steve Schneider & Helen Treharne, Towards a Practical Approach to Check UML/fUML Models Consistency Using CSP, ICFEM: 13th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods, Durham, 2011.

• Islam Abdelhalim, Steve Schneider & Helen Treharne, Formal Verification of fUML Models Using CSP. 8th Annual PhD Conference, University of Surrey, Department of Computing, 2011.

• Islam Abdelhalim, James Sharp, Steve Schneider & Helen Treharne, Formal Verification of Tokeneer Behaviours Modelled in fUML using CSP. ICFEM : 12th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods, Shanghai, 2010.

Teaching

•  Demonstrator for the “Programming Fundamentals” module (COM 1027)
•  Demonstrator for the “Software Engineering” module (COM 1018)
•  Demonstrator for the “Modelling and Simulation” module (COM 2007)