Gunar Schirner holds a Ph.D. degree (2008) and a M.S. degree (2005) in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Irvine. He graduated in computer engineering from the Berufsakademie Berlin, Germany, in 1998. Prior to joining the Northeastern faculty in fall 2009, he was an assistant project scientist at the Center for Embedded Computer Systems (CECS) at the University of California, Irvine. Gunar Schirner also has 5 years of industry experience at Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent) where he designed distributed embedded real-time software for telecommunication products. His research interests include embedded system modeling, system-level design, and the synthesis of embedded  software.