Maria Spichkova

Dr Maria Spichkova is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University. Her research interests include Human aspects of  Software Engineering (SE), Requirements Engineering, application of AI for SE, Computer science education, Formal methods and Sustainability. She has served as OC and PC member on various top-ranked conferences, such as  ICSE, RE, ICSA, MODELS, ECSA, KES, ENASE, MobiQuitous, etc.,  as well as organised several workshops and special sessions at ECSA, SEFM, and ENASE. She also was a co-Chair of MODELS’23 Poster Track, RE’22 Student Volunteers Track.

Maria received a PhD in Computer Science in 2007 at the Technical University of Munich (Germany), where she worked in a Researcher and Lecturer role between 2003 and 2013.  She joined RMIT in June 2013. Since 2013, she worked each year as a PC member of more than 10 international conferences and workshops PC (overall since then she served in more than 120 PCs), where most of venues are ranked by CORE as A*/ A.  She also has served as the reviewer of journals and conferences (such as Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Journal of Systems & Software, etc.), the Program Committee co-chair and member for international conferences and workshops (HOFM, SAGRA, RE4SuSy, MoDeVVa and IEEE APSCC).

Maria has authored or co-authored over 140 publications including a monograph, journal articles, refereed conference papers, and book chapters. 

In total, since 2015, Maria secured as a Chief Investigator (CI) more than $385k, where more than $330k were external research income as a leading CI.

Professional Awards and Distinctions 

2023: Fellow of the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI)

2022: Honourable Mention finalist of the International LearnSci Teaching Innovation Awards

2020: Recognised at the national level with Citations at the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT’19): Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning  

Both LearnSci and AAUT awards were received for the achievements within Chirality-2 project that was conducted in a multidisciplinary team with Prof Michelle Spencer and Prof Oliver Jones.

2018: Merit iAward  in Community Service Markets category, Victoria: Chirality-2 project in a multidisciplinary team with A/Prof M. Spencer and A/Prof O. Jones (Chemistry)

2016: Best Paper Award  at 11th International Conf. on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering 

2015: iAward  in UG section, Victoria: EndOfTrip student project, where I was the first supervisor.

2010: TU Munich (Germany):  President’s Excellence Research and Teaching Award  

2008: TU Munich (Germany):  President’s Excellence Research Award

2007: TU Munich (Germany):  President’s Excellence Research Award 

Throughout her academic career, Maria co-organised and also led collaborative projects with partners from industry and also government. Before joining RMIT in 2013,  she worked over 10 years at the TU Munich with partners from industry, e.g., Microsoft  (European Microsoft Innovation Center), BMW Group, Robert Bosch, DENSO Automotive (Germany), DENSO Corporation (Japan), ITK Engineering AG (Germany), and AVL (Austria), as well as with the partners from other universities.

*** Please note: Maria is actively seeking to supervise good PhD/Masters/Hons research students at RMIT University, Australia. Please feel free to contact her at maria.spichkova@rmit.edu.au if you are interested.***