Publication

The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), in support of Missile Defense Agency (MDA) requirements for professional education of its technical workforce, developed two two-day professional education short courses, one on Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) and the other on Verification, Validation, and Accreditation (VV&A).

 To develop the MCS and VV&A courses, UAH investigated how models and simulations are used at MDA, with a focus on MCS and VV&A.  UAH then developed course materials that addressed MDA’s needs for MCS and VV&A instruction.  Those course materials included both general background content on MCS and VV&A and custom content that should be of particular use to MDA.

 UAH taught each of the two courses four times, for a total of eight course offerings.  Four of the course offerings (two of each course) were taught in Huntsville Alabama and four of the offerings (two of each course) were taught in Colorado Springs CO.  A total of 119 MDA students participated in the eight course offerings. After each course offering, UAH made corrections and enhancements to the content based on feedback from the MDA students in the courses.

 In addition to the MCS and VV&A courses, UAH developed, but did not teach, two additional two-day professional education short course on the subjects of Fundamentals of Modeling and Simulation (FMS) and Physics-Based Modeling (PBM).  This contact did not included funding or tasking to teach these courses.  However, they were developed and are ready to be taught when MDA requires them.