Since 2007, Dr. Alexander Knapp holds a professorship for foundations of software & systems engineering. Ever more complex and ever more heterogeneous software systems make models for abstracting with respect to different perspectives, declarative specifications, and learning methods for stressing the “what?” over the “how?”, as well as integrated qualtiy assurance by the use of formal methods grow ever more decisive. Professor Knapp works on modelling languages, their semantics, and consistency checks; declarative constraint languages for perference and decision optimisation; and verification and testing of concurrent and adpative systems also using machine learning techniques.