Luca Piras is a Senior Lecturer (of Software Engineering, Privacy and Gamification Engineering) at Middlesex University (MDX), London (UK), Programme Leader of Information Technology (IT) BSc, member of the MDX Software Engineering, Theory and Algorithms (SETA) Group, and Module Leader of the “Web-Based Mobile App Development” Module. Previously, he was a Lecturer of Privacy, Security, Acceptance and Gamification Engineering at Robert Gordon University (RGU), Aberdeen (UK), member of the RGU Cybersecurity Group, and Module Coordinator of the Modules: “Computer Security and Cryptography”, “Managing a Network Group Project” and “Routing and Switching”.
He is an official program committee member of different International Conferences, and official reviewer of International Journals such as the Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Journal (TSE), the Elsevier International Computers & Security Journal (COSE).
His research concerns designing, developing, and applying novel Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Modeling techniques and methods for solving Privacy, Security, Software Acceptance and Gamification problems:
- Specifically, one of his research interest is related to privacy-by-design, with particular interest to supporting organisations in achieving GDPR compliance, via semi-automated software tools able to guide and support requirements analysts in visual/modeling ways.
- The other important research interest concerns Acceptance Requirements Analysis based on Gamification for making Software Systems more engaging. This research focuses on characterising software users (by analysing also behavioural and human-science related aspects), for supporting requirements analysts to identify the most suitable game elements and mechanisms (able to motivate the intended users), for designing software systems functionalities enriched with gamification solutions (more details in the related scientific papers, PhD Thesis available at http://eprints-phd.biblio.unitn.it/3424/1/Luca_Piras_PhD_Thesis_FINAL_VERSION.pdf and at https://pirasluca.wordpress.com/home/acceptance/).
He is also interested in the intersections of the two research directions indicated above.
He worked in the the Data govErnance For supportiNg gDpr (DEFeND) European Project (https://www.defendproject.eu/). He contributed to the research activities of such project, being first author of the most important publications of such project. He also played the role of Task Leader for core aspects of the project, and was also in charge of the technical project management concerning all the contributions delivered by the University of Brighton to the DEFeND Project, and supported directly the Technical Manager of DEFeND. In that period, he worked as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Privacy and Security Engineering, Acceptance Requirements Analysis and Gamification Engineering at the University of Brighton (UK) for 2 years.
Previously, he worked as researcher at the University of Trento (Italy) for 5 years, by pro-actively participating and contributing to different EU Projects (e.g., the PACAS Project, VisiOn Project, ERC Lucretius Project, SUPERSEDE Project, STREETLIFE Project), related to Privacy, Security, Acceptance and Gamification Engineering applied within context such as Privacy and Security for organisations, Air Traffic Management (ATM), Participatory and Architectural Change Management for ATM, Smart Cities and Sustainable Transports.
He also holds Cisco Certifications (Cisco CCNA and CCNA Security). He also has experience from the industry by working for 5 years as Software Engineer and Team Leader concerning the analysis, design and development of complex information systems related to projects of the Sardinia Autonomous Region (RAS), a Region of Italy.
0000-0002-7530-4119
