Separation of concerns is one of the main tenets of software engineering - allowing developers to reason about software systems in sensible portions, regardless which phase of the lifecycle they are working in. Many researchers in software engineering are actually in the field of aspect-orientation without realizing it.
Citation:
Elisa Baniassad, Kung Chen, Shigeru Chiba, Jan Hannemann, Hidehiko Masuhara, Shangping Ren, Jianjun Zhao, "2nd Asian Workshop on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOAsia)," ase, pp.375, 21st IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE'06), 2006