Research & Innovation

SERC Recognized with Two Awards at INCOSE International Symposium

SERC was presented with the Best Theme Editors award and the Best Article award at the 31st annual event.

The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) of the School of Systems & Enterprises received two awards at the 31st Annual International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) International Symposium, held virtually from July 17-22. SERC’s leadership team was awarded Best Theme Editors honors for its curation of and contributions to the March 2020 issue of INSIGHT, with the theme of AI and Systems Engineering. SERC was also presented with the award for Best Article for the issue’s lead inclusion, "AI4SE and SE4AI: A Research Roadmap." 

INCOSE’s 2020 Best Theme Editors award was conferred upon SERC’s leadership team that curated the issue, including Dr. Dinesh Verma, Executive Director; Mr. Thomas A. McDermott, Jr., Deputy Director; and Ms. Kara Pepe, Assistant Director.The March issue of the INCOSE magazine exclusively featured content from SERC-affiliated collaborators. For the issue, the Theme Editors selected articles produced by SERC researchers that illustrated the center’s ongoing research in AI and systems engineering. They also chose articles that aligned with the issue’s theme of addressing challenges to leveraging augmented and AI for systems engineering (AI4SE) and the transformation needed in systems engineering methods, procedures and tools (MPTs) to develop systems with embedded AI that are fit for purpose and do no (unintended) harm. The SERC articles featured in the March 2020 issue are within the scope of the broader systems community’s focus on the future of systems engineering (FuSE) that has AI4SE and SE4AI as an initial project.

The Best Article award was given to the issue’s lead article, “AI4SE and SE4AI: A Research Roadmap,"authored by Mr. Thomas A. McDermott, Jr., Deputy Director; Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis, Chief Scientist; Research Council members Dr. Peter Beling and Dr. Mark Blackburn; and Dr. Mary A. Bone. The article summarizes the SERC-developed roadmap that structures and guides AI and autonomy research. It also presents key underlying digital engineering transformation aspects that enable automation of traditional systems engineering practice and encourage new practices to support automated, adaptive, and learning systems. The awarded lead article maps the March 2020 issue’s subsequent articles to the roadmap’s research areas—Enterprises and Systems of Systems (ESoS), Trusted Systems (TS), Systems Engineering, Systems Management Transformation (SEMT), and Human Capital Development (HCD), as well as the roadmap’s mission areas: Velocity, Security, AI, and Autonomy.

The invitation to curate the March 2020 issue of INSIGHT and the awards received affirm SERC’s thought leadership in the context of closing the gap between the state of practice and the state of research in the field of systems engineering. 

This article originally appeared on the Systems Engineering Research Center's website.