Prof. Dr. Sven Apel holds the Chair of Software Engineering at Saarland University and is Adjunct Faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Magdeburg in 2007. His research focuses on developing and evaluating methods, tools, and theories for constructing and analyzing efficient, reliable, maintainable, and configurable software systems. In this work, he gives particular attention to the human factor, the role of AI, and interdisciplinary research questions. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He served as program committee co-chair for the 31st International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) and the 27th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE). In 2022, he received an ERC Advanced Grant. His work has also received funding from the prestigious Emmy Noether and Heisenberg Programs of the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2025, the Association for Computing Machinery named him an ACM Fellow "for developing theories and methods that empower humans to comprehend, construct, and optimize software systems". In 2026, he was elected to the inaugural class of the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Academy, which recognizes "members of the software engineering community whose significant and lasting contributions have shaped the field". His work has received three Most Influential Paper Awards (SPLC'18, ICPC'22, GPCE'23), four Best Paper Awards (SPLC'11, Modularity'15, Academy of Management'18, MODELS'26), two ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards (ICSE'15, ICSE'21), and awards from the Ernst Denert Foundation and the Karin Witte Foundation.