Patrick Heymans is Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Namur and founder of skalup.com, a UNamur spinoff company delivering innovative AI solutions to industry. He is a founding member and former director of the PReCISE research centre (50 researchers). Patrick’s main research interests are in the foundations and applications of formal and visual modeling techniques to improve the quality of software products and processes. He has been principal investigator on over 25 regional, national and international research projects, ranging from fundamental to applied research. He is also a regular advisor and trainer for industry. Patrick has supervised 12 completed PhD theses, is (co)author of 140 peer-reviewed international scientific publications, has an H-index of 36 and 5.592 citations (Google Scholar, November 2017). He is a permanent scientific advisor for CETIC, Wallonia’s major IT research institute. He regularly acts as an evaluator for national and international research agencies and as a referee for top-tier international journals and conferences in the field of software engineering. Patrick chaired the program of major international conferences (REFSQ’07, REFSQ’09, RE’11, SPLC’14 and ESEC/FSE 2015). Patrick’s research has been recognized through a number of awards including the Most Influential Paper Award at RE’16 (retrospectively from RE’06), three Best Scientific Paper Awards at RE’13, RE’12 and RE’09, and a Distinguished Paper at RE’06. In 2014, Patrick was the recipient of a 3-year Francqui Research Professorship.