His research focuses on various facets of formal methods ranging from program analysis and verification, to workflow synthesis, to test-based modeling, and machine learning.
Since 1997 he holds the chair of programming systems at TU Dortmund University where he was Dean of Computer Science between 2002 and 2006 as well as a member of the Senate in 2006 and 2007.
[1] In Dortmund he developed the concept of active automata learning to towards a practical means for model-based testing that does not require any a priori models.
His conceptual background comprises abstract interpretation, computer-aided verification and explanation, automata learning, and the development of domain-specific languages that guarantee properties by design.
Furthermore, Steffen is founding Editor in Chief of STTT,[4] Co-Founder of TACAS,[5] ETAPS,[6] ISoLA,[7] RERS[8] and member of the editorial board of LNCS.