Keynote Speakers

Christian Lichka

Design the business. Architect its future. Enterprise models are key

Abstract: Enterprise models have a long track record — and an even brighter future. As markets stay volatile, regulations tighten, and Gen-AI accelerates change, models become the shared operating language of Business and IT. They turn scattered data into reliable information, cut through complexity, and ground decisions in evidence rather than instinct.

This keynote explores how leading organisations apply enterprise models in business transformation, IT management, and compliance. With model-based Digital Twins of the Organisation (DTOs), modelling evolves from documentation to simulation and, ultimately, prediction.That lets teams estimate business and EBIT impact before change goes live, reduce documentation effort through Gen-AI assistance, and use context-rich insights to steer architecture decisions with confidence.

Biography: Dr Christian Lichka is a board member of BOC Group, an international leader in Enterprise Management Systems, where he spearheads global marketing, partner ecosystems, specialized compliance products and cloud-integration innovations. As founder of BOC Switzerland, he scaled the start-up into a market-shaping provider of Business Transformation, IT Management, and Compliance solutions. Holding a PhD in Business Informatics from the University of Vienna, Christian has spent two decades teaching executives and graduate students across Europe, blending strategy, process management, GRC, and agile leadership. Beyond academia, he regularly shares and challenges transformation insights in client engagements at national and international levels. His current work focuses on steering organizations through large-scale change, balancing entrepreneurial drive and technological innovation with modern compliance demands - insights he will distil in his keynote.

Birgit Penzenstadler

Integrating Nature as Stakeholder in Enterprise Modeling

Abstract: With the Sustainable Development Goals as central pillar informing many policies by governments and legislation, we get to think about what it means to include our natural environment as more than a passive backdrop in our operational and business environments. What are the foundations from sustainability science, what are the legal aspects, and what are requirements engineering approaches to deal with this? I give an overview of the work I have done in the area of software-intensive systems and connect to new ideas on an agroecology case to widen our understanding of how nature is a relevant stakeholder.

Biography: Birgit Penzenstadler is an Associate Professor at the joint Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University, Sweden, as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. She is the Editor-in-chief for the Continuous Special Section on Sustainability in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), as well as an Associate Editor for the Requirements Engineering Journal and IEEE Software. She is the founding chair of the ACM-W chapter Gothenburg. She holds a PhD in Software Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Furthermore, she is a 500-RYT yoga teacher with special certification in breathwork, an Embodied Mindfulness Coach, Reiki level II practitioner, a NET (narrative exposure therapy) facilitator, and permaculture designer. Her research centres around sustainability, wellbeing, and resilience from the point of view of software engineering. She has been investigating well-being (www.twinkleflip.com), resilience, and sustainability from a point of view of software engineering during the past ten years, working on a body of knowledge and concepts of how to support sustainability from within RE. Part of these efforts are documented with the Karlskrona Alliance that published a body of work including the Karlskrona Manifesto (see The Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design). She included the topic into the curriculum of her departments at various universities along the way (Technical University of Munich, University of California, Irvine, California State University Long Beach, Chalmers Technical University) and established industrial collaborations for case studies. She currently looks into how software engineering research can help support permaculture and regenerative agriculture because she's a food growing enthusiast and plant lover. She gave a TEDx talk in 2022 in Goeteborg about how wellbeing, resilience and sustainability are connected and how to consider them when designing technology.

Xavier Franch

Green AI in Enterprise Modeling: Challenges and Roadmap

Abstract: The growing integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Enterprise Information Systems is transforming industries and driving Sustainable Reindustrialization through efficiency and resource optimization. However, this progress comes with environmental costs, including high energy consumption and carbon emissions from large-scale AI training and inference. These challenges have given rise to the concept of Green AI, which calls for a shift from performance-focused development toward environmentally conscious AI practices that balance accuracy with energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and transparent sustainability.

This keynote explores the integration of environmental sustainability into enterprise modeling as a means to operationalize Green AI principles. It reflects on extending existing methodologies to incorporate sustainability metrics, lifecycle assessments, and design decisions that account for environmental impact. The presentation aims to identify current gaps preventing the adoption of Green AI in enterprise modeling and to define a research agenda for creating environmentally responsible information systems. Ultimately, it positions enterprise modeling as a key tool for aligning AI-driven transformation with global sustainability goals.

Biography: Xavier Franch is full professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), where he leads the Software and Service Engineering research group (GESSI). His research lines include requirements engineering, conceptual modeling, information system engineering, green AI, software architecture, and empirical software engineering. He received the Most Influential Paper awards in IEEE RE (2022) and REFSQ (2024) conferences. He received the Life-Time Service Award from IEEE RE in 2023. He is member of the Academia Europea; Full Member and Council Vice-President of the International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB); member of the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN); Fellow of Artificial Intelligence Industry Academy within the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA); and Steering Committee member of CAiSE (as chair), ESEM, CAIN and REFSQ conferences. He was PC co-chair of CAiSE'22, RE'16, ICSOC'14, CAiSE'12, REFSQ'11, and ICCBSS'06, among others. He is Editorial Board member of JSS, IST, REEN and Computing journals.