SERC’s Systems Thought Leadership Attracts DoD Partnership, INCOSE Awards
Established in 2008 as part of the School of Systems & Enterprises, the Systems Engineering Research Center has a network of 22 collaborator universities throughout the United States.
Through the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), the School of Systems & Enterprises (SSE) continues to affirm its leading role in system engineering. SERC, the primary University-Affiliated Research Center (UARC) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in systems science, leads advanced systems engineering research initiatives with real-world applicability.
The transformative potential of the systems methodologies that shape SSE and SERC research was recently illustrated in SERC’s announcement of a new research partnership with the DoD, and in two systems engineering and artificial intelligence-focused SERC publications that earned International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) awards.
U.S. DoD Seeks SERC’s Assistance in Improving United States Defense Acquisition System
SERC will leverage its systems engineering researchers and network of collaborator universities to directly aid DoD efforts to advance the nation’s defense acquisition system. Piloting, experimentation and modeling and analytics efforts related to the initiative will be performed at the Acquisition Innovation and Research Center (AIRC) within SERC, and will translate to updated DoD instructions, policies, procedures and practices.
“The world is moving more quickly than ever,” said Dinesh Verma, professor and executive director of SERC, who will lead the SERC initiative in partnership with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD A&S).
“This work will enable the United States to respond to adversaries not only quickly, but in a way that integrates policies, data and the country’s values, ultimately protecting our warfighters and benefitting civilians,” Verma said.
The DoD will award SERC a $2.3 million award to support defense acquisition system research and innovation.
INCOSE Awards SERC 2020 INSIGHT Best Theme Editors Award, Best Article Award
INCOSE has recognized SERC’s thought leadership at the intersection of systems engineering and AI with the 2020 INSIGHT Best Theme Editors Award and the 2020 INSIGHT Best Article Award for INSIGHT Issue, Vol. 23, Issue 1, March 2020 (“AI and Systems Engineering”) and “AI4SE and SE4AI: A Research Roadmap,” respectively. Both awards will be formally announced during a plenary session at INCOSE’s Virtual International Symposium, hosted from July 17-22. The theme editors for the award-winning INSIGHT issue include Dinesh Verma, Tom McDermott and Kara Pepe. Tom McDermott, Dan DeLaurentis, Peter Beling, Mark Blackburn and Mary Bone authored the award-winning paper.
For a comprehensive record of recent SERC achievements, review SERC’s June 2021 updates report.