Community-Building
Community-building activities by Dr. Bentley Oakes, including conference organization, program committees, invited talks, and outreach.
Building research communities is an opportunity, not an obligation. I aim to create spaces for researchers to share ideas, and for students to follow in their footsteps.
SERIQ and SEMTL
SERIQ, Software Engineering Research Centre in Québec, Steering Committee Member and Cyber-Physical Systems Axis Co-Lead, Oct. 2026 to Present
Software Engineering at Montréal (SEMTL), Lead Organizer, Aug. 2022 to Oct. 2026
SERIQ is a new inter-university centre that connects software engineering researchers across Québec. It starts with four universities (Université de Montréal, Polytechnique Montréal, McGill, and ÉTS) and four research axes: cyber-physical systems, ecosystems and infrastructure, architecture and design, and human aspects. I sit on the steering committee and co-lead the cyber-physical systems axis with Aren Babikian and Francis Bordeleau.
SERIQ continues SEMTL, the seminar series I restarted in 2022 and led until it joined SERIQ in October 2026. About every two months, SEMTL brought together professors and students from six Montréal institutions to share research, find collaborators and opportunities, and socialize. Students also got to practise presenting to a supportive audience. Over nineteen meetings of 30 to 40 people, SEMTL hosted keynotes from top SE researchers and dozens of student presentations. It helped several PhD students and postdocs find their next position, and led to a MODELS 2024 paper, Toward Intelligent Generation of Tailored Graphical Concrete Syntax.
Organising Committee Member
| Conference/Workshop | Role | Year(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS) | Publicity Co-Chair Student Volunteer Co-Chair Posters Co-Chair | 2027 2025 2022 |
| Software Engineering for Machine Learning Applications (SEMLA) | General Chair Posters Co-Chair | 2026 2024, 2025 |
| ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) | Student Volunteer Co-Chair | 2026 |
| onto:Nexus Workshop (International Workshop on Ontological Modeling and Analysis) | Co-Chair | 2025, 2026 |
| International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) | Posters Co-Chair | 2025 |
| International Conference on Engineering Digital Twins (EDTconf) | Publicity Co-Chair | 2024 |
| Annual Modeling and Simulation Conference (ANNSIM) | Proceedings Co-Chair Cyber-Physical Systems Track Co-Chair | 2024 2022, 2023 |
Program Committee Member
Journal Reviewer
| Journal | Role / Recognition | Year(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Journal of Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM) | 🏆 Top 1% Reviewer (2020 & 2021) · Best Reviewer Award (2025) | 2020, 2021, 2023, 2025, 2026 |
| KI – Künstliche Intelligenz | Reviewer | 2026 |
| Journal of Object Technology (JOT) | Reviewer | 2022, 2026 |
| Journal of Systems & Software (JSS) | Reviewer | 2025 |
| Information and Software Technology (IST) | Reviewer | 2025 |
| Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) | Reviewer | 2024 |
| SIMULATION | 🏆 Best Reviewer Award (June 2023) | 2023, 2024 |
| Science of Computer Programming (SCP) | Reviewer | 2023 |
| Journal of Computer Languages (JCL) | Reviewer | 2022 |
| Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) | Reviewer | 2022 |
| IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) | Reviewer | 2021 |
Grant Reviewer
| Grant | Year |
|---|---|
| NSERC Idea to Innovation grant | 2024 |
| NSERC Discovery grant | 2025, 2026 |
| Dutch Research Council (NWO) | 2026 |
Guest Editor for Journal Special Issue
| Venue | Issue Title | Year |
|---|---|---|
| SIMULATION | Modeling and Simulation for Software-Intensive Systems: from IoT to Digital Twins | 2023 |
Invited Talks & Presentations
| Title | Venue | Date |
|---|---|---|
| “What Does Your Digital Twin Do? A Framework and Tooling for Systematic DT Reporting” | Guest lecture, Engineering Digital Twins course (CAS 782), McMaster University (host: Prof. Istvan David) | slides | Mar. 2026 |
| “Towards Ontology-based Digital Twin Service Construction and Reporting” | Invited talk, SIG LLODIA (Lecture #3) | Jan. 2026 |
| “What is a ‘Digital Twin’ and How Do I Build One?” | Guest lecture, RAISE course, UCLA (host: Dr. Maged Elaasar) | Nov. 2025 |
| “What is a ‘Digital Twin’ and How Do I Build One?” | Tutorial, Software Engineering for Machine Learning Applications (SEMLA) | Jun. 2025 |
| “Systematic Digital Twin Reporting” | EDT.Community Talks | video | May 2025 |
| “Accelerating Digital Twin Research and Engineering” | Next-Generation Cities Institute, Concordia University | May 2025 |
| “Building Domain-Specific Machine Learning Workflows…” (journal-first) | ICSE 2025, Ottawa | May 2025 |
| “Accelerating Digital Twin Research and Engineering” | Guest lecture, Engineering Digital Twins course, McMaster University (host: Prof. Istvan David) | slides | Mar. 2025 |
| Research presentation on Advanced Air Mobility | KARI Delegation, Polytechnique Montréal | Feb. 2025 |
| “Recent Work on Systematic Reporting and Construction for Digital Twins” | Invited talk, Software Engineering at Montréal (SEMTL), Montréal | 2025 |
| “Digital Twins: Introductions and Intersections” | Guest lecture, LOG8704 - XR Software Development, Polytechnique Montréal | Nov. 2024 |
| “Fault localization in DSLTrans model transformations…” (SoSyM Journal-First) | MODELS 2024 | Sep. 2024 |
| “Accelerating Digital Twin Construction with Ontologies” | Invited talk, onto:Nexus Forum 2024: 1st International Forum on Ontological Modeling and Analysis, NASA JPL (online) | Jan. 2024 |
| “Bridging the Gap in Verification and Validation of Complex Systems” | Invited talk, Polytechnique Montréal | 2023 |
| “Model/Graph Transformations: Specification and Verification” | Guest lecture, LOG6953DE - Model-Driven Software Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal (host: Prof. Mohammad Hamdaqa) | Nov. 2022 |
| “Building Domain-Specific Machine Learning Workflows: A Conceptual Framework for the State-of-the-Practice” | Invited talk, Software Engineering at Montréal (SEMTL) September seminar, Université de Montréal | Sep. 2022 |
| “Building Domain-Specific Machine Learning Workflows: A Conceptual Framework for the State-of-the-Practice” | Invited talk, Concordia University (host: Prof. Essam Mansour) | 2022 |
| “Capturing and Utilising Domain-Specific Knowledge” | Invited talk, Université du Québec à Montréal | 2022 |
Jury Member
| Institution | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Polytechnique Montréal | PhD Thesis Jury Member | 2026 |
| Polytechnique Montréal | M.Sc. Thesis Jury President ×4 | 2024, 2026 |
| Polytechnique Montréal | PhD Qualifying Exam Jury ×3 | 2025–2026 |
| INSA Lyon / Polytechnique Montréal | PhD Thesis Jury Member | 2026 |
| McGill University | M.Sc. and PhD Thesis External Reviewer | 2023–2024 |
Panelist
| Conference/Workshop | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Modeling and Simulation Conference (ANNSIM) | PhD Colloquium Panelist | 2023 |
Departmental Service
| Institution | Role | Year(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Polytechnique Montréal | Committee Member, Committee Rayonnement (Communications committee), Department of Computer and Software Engineering | 2024–Present |