Dr. Florian Hofer

Researcher

Free University of Bozen/Bolzano

About me

Florian Hofer works across industry, industry research, and academia. His career spans more than two decades in industrial automation, software engineering, and applied research for cyber-physical systems.

He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (2022), with a thesis on "Resilience and Weaknesses of Smart Systems' Architectures".

His work focuses on real-time systems, industrial control systems, programmable logic controllers (IEC 61131-3), containerization and virtualization for Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems, and IoT architectures including LoRaWAN and smart-lighting systems.

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Career snapshot

Industrial automation first, then applied research

A compact view of roles across industry, industry research, and academia.

Production systems

Automation, commissioning, diagnostics, and software deployed under real operating constraints.

Industry research

Industry 4.0, real-time orchestration, containers, and validated architecture work with partners.

Teaching and mentoring

Practical systems knowledge translated into teaching, supervision, and applied technical guidance.

2025-present Academia

Researcher, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano

Orchestration and performance engineering for reliable self-adaptive systems across the edge-cloud continuum.

2024-2025 Industry research

Postdoctoral researcher, University of Bologna

Distributed real-time orchestration in virtualized environments for Industry 4.0, with IMA, Bonfiglioli, Siemens and CodeSys at BiRex Bologna

2022-2023 Industry research

Postdoctoral researcher, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano

Industry collaboration with systems s.r.l. on cloud-based infrastructure monitoring for distributed smart-system architectures.

2018-2020 Industry research

Visiting researcher, UC Berkeley

Industrial automation, Industry 4.0, and real-time control with containers.

2015-2017 Industry

Freelance software engineer

Development, testing, and maintenance of automation systems across B.T.S. Biogas, Danfoss Drives, and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

2000-2015 Industry

Industrial automation engineer and software architect

Progressive engineering roles across multiple industrial companies, covering 24/7 production maintenance, control software architecture, commissioning, diagnostics, and migration of PLC software platforms.

Applied research and interests

My applied research sits at the intersection of software engineering and industrial systems. I focus on problems that matter in production settings, where software must be reliable, deterministic, secure, and maintainable under real-world constraints.

Key topics include real-time systems and scheduling, industrial control systems and programmable logic controllers (PLCs / IEC 61131-3), containerization and virtualization for cyber-physical systems, smart-lighting and LoRaWAN/IoT architectures, and automated software testing for embedded and industrial systems.

This is the list of research projects I participated in:

  • 18.9.25–28.2.26: Researcher, Behavior-enabled IoT (BeT). Funding body: NextGenereationEU. Researcher
  • 24.1.24–23.5.25: Researcher, Joint Resource Management in Reconfigurable I4.0 Factories (JOULE). Funding body: PRIN 2022. Researcher
  • 1.9.18–31.1.23: Researcher, Industry for the Smart-* (I4S). Funding body: systems s.r.l.. Researcher
  • 01.10.2018–30.09.22: Researcher, Software Architecture Recommendation system built on Design Change History (SARDECH). Funding body: CRC Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Researcher
  • 1.9.18–30.8.20: Researcher, Real-Time Control Containers (RTVM). Funding body: Siemens Corporate Technology, USA. Researcher
  • 1.11.17–31.10.19: Researcher, Detecting Behavioural Anomalies in the Operations of Large Software Systems (DEBASS). Funding body: CRC Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Researcher
  • 1.10.16–31.3.17: Researcher, Computational Thinking Assisted Language Learning (CtALL). Funding body: CRC Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Researcher

Publications

Here is the list of my current publications. Please also have a look at my page on Google Scholar.

  1. Journal paper N.G. Gunduz, F. Hofer, E. Guerra, N. El Ioini, & C. Pahl (2026). Automated Incident Management using Infrastructure-as-Code. IEEE Software , 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2026.3676644
  2. Journal paper C. Pahl, O. C. Sezen, & F. Hofer (2026). Artificial Intelligence for Infrastructure-as-Code—A Systematic Literature Review. Electronics 15(4), 755. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15040755
  3. Conference paper F. Hofer & R. Venanzi (2025, 14.–16.10.2025). Beyond the Virtual PLC Networking Constraints: MACvLAN Approach in Industrial Environments 2025 IEEE 30th International Workshop on Computer Aided Modeling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD), Tempe, AZ, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/CAMAD67323.2025.11229913
  4. Conference paper F. Hofer & B. Russo (2025, 19.–21.11.2025). On the cybersecurity of LoRaWAN-based system: a Smart-Lighting case study The 15th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT), Vienna, Austria. https://doi.org/10.1145/3770501.3770524
  5. Conference paper F. Hofer & C. Kuen (2022, 27.6.–1.7.2022). Off-the-shelf LoRaWAN: Experimenting on the prospect of a low-cost rapid prototyping solution 2022 IEEE 46th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Torino, Italy. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC54236.2022.00159
  6. Conference paper F. Hofer (2022, 4.–6.5.2022). IEC 61131-3 Software Testing – Automatic test generation for native applications 13th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), Milano, Italy. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCPS54341.2022.00032
  7. Book chapter F. Hofer & B. Russo (2022). Architecture and Its Vulnerabilities in Smart-Lighting Systems. In Dario Maggiorini, Vincenzo Piuri, and Simone A. Ludwig (Eds.), Technologies for Smart Cities. (pp. 29–52). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05516-4_10
  8. Book F. Hofer (2022). Resilience and Weaknesses of Smart Systems' Architectures (PhD Thesis) Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
  9. Journal paper F. Hofer, M. Sehr, A. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, & B. Russo (2021). Industrial control via application containers: Maintaining determinism in IAAS. Journal of Systems Engineering 24(1), 352–368. https://doi.org/10.1002/sys.21590
  10. Journal paper F. Hofer & B. Russo (2019). IEC 61131-3 Software Testing: a Portable Solution for native applications. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics 16(6), 3942–3951. https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2019.2941584
  11. Workshop paper F. Hofer, M.A. Sehr, A. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, & B. Russo (2019, 13.10.2019). Probabilistic dynamic hard real-time scheduling in HPC 2nd International Workshop on Operating Systems for Real-Time and Embedded Systems (ODRE), New York, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISORC49007.2020.00043
  12. Conference paper F. Hofer, M.A. Sehr, A. Iannopollo, I. Ugalde, A. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, & B. Russo (2019, 12.–14.11.2019). Industrial control via application containers: Migrating from bare-metal to IAAS 2019 IEEE 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), Sydney, Australia. https://doi.org/10.1109/CloudCom.2019.00021
  13. Workshop paper F. Hofer (2018, 15.–18.10.2018). Enhancing security and reliability for smart-systems' architectures 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW), Memphis, TN, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISSREW.2018.000-8
  14. Full paper F. Hofer (2018, 11.–12.10.2018). Architecture, technologies and challenges for cyber-physical systems in industry 4.0: A systematic mapping study 12th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), Oulu, Finland. https://doi.org/10.1145/3239235.3239242

Events

I believe that the exchange with other scientists and practitioners is essential to ensure that my work is relevant and impactful. Here is a selection of events I have participated in or presented at:

Teaching and mentoring

Teaching is one way I connect industry practice, applied research, and academic training. I aim to bring practical experience into the classroom and connect theory with the kinds of systems engineers build and operate in the field.

This is the list of courses I have held:

  • Computer Networks (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2025/26)
  • Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2025/26)
  • Computer Networks (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2024/25)
  • Big Data and Blockchain, w/ Prof. Coletti (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 3 ECTS Teaching Assistant (2023/24)
  • Computer Networks (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2023/24)
  • Introduction to Microcontroller Programming, w/ Dr. Camurri (ING-INF/04), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Teaching Assistant (2023/24)
  • Computer Networks (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2022/23)
  • Tools and Techniques for Software Testing, w/ Prof. Russo (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Teaching Assistant (2021/22)
  • Tools and Techniques for Software Testing, w/ Prof. Russo (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Teaching Assistant (2020/21)
  • Summer School - Containerization (INF/01), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Madrid (ES) Lecturer (2019/20)
  • Tools and Techniques for Software Testing, w/ Prof. Russo (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Teaching Assistant (2019/20)
  • Introduction to Information Science, w/ Prof. von Ellenrieder (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2018/19)
  • Distributed Systems, w/ Prof. Nutt (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2017/18)
  • Data Structures and Algorithms, w/ Prof. Nutt (INF/01), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 9 ECTS Lecturer (2016/17)
  • Distributed Systems, w/ Dr. Razniewski (ING-INF/05), Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (IT), 6 ECTS Lecturer (2016/17)