Researcher

Michael Pennock is an Assistant Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The long-term goal of his research is to create new approaches to design and evolve large-scale systems that consist of interacting engineered and social components. The increasing interconnectivity of modern systems ranging from transportation systems to healthcare delivery systems to app ecosystems has rendered many traditional approaches to systems engineering inadequate. Central to resolving this this dilemma is the development of techniques to computationally model these systems in a way that is useful for engineers. Understanding how to construct and use these types of computational models, with a particular emphasis on integrating human and social factors, has been the central focus of his research. 

Michael has been PI or Co-PI on multiple sponsored research projects including sponsors such as the US Department of Defense and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Recent projects include employing machine learning techniques to identify modularity violations in cyber-physical systems, adapting graphical analysis methods to understand the composability of computational models, using simulation to understand the adoption of evidence based interventions in the US healthcare system, and analyzing policies to deter counterfeit electronic parts in supply chains. Results from this research have been directly integrated into the courses he teaches in the areas of statistics, operations research, and decision analysis.

Michael has also worked as a senior systems engineer in various lead technical roles for the Northrop Grumman Corporation. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Bachelors and Masters degrees in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Areas of Specialty

• Model based systems engineering
• Systems modeling and simulation
• Decision and risk analysis