Registration and Networking
8:00 am
AI4SE & SE4AI Workshop 2025
Sep 17-18, 2025 Washington, DC
***Please note: this event is sold out, and no more tickets will be available.***
The Systems Engineering Research Center and U.S. Army DEVCOM Armaments Center are pleased to welcome participants for the sixth annual AI4SE & SE4AI Research and Application Workshop on September 17-18, hosted by The George Washington University Trustworthy AI Initiative in Washington, DC.
Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence Enabled Systems (AIES) are key enablers of both future operational capabilities and efficiency in the lifecycle of acquisition, engineering, manufacturing and operations & sustainment. This presents both transformative potential, and new risks. System engineering as a discipline has a critical role to play in ensuring that when deployed, AIES will work as needed, in accordance with legal principles and does not introduce new sources of vulnerability. Systems engineering processes must be updated to meet these changing needs.
The conference theme for 2025 – “Systems Engineering AI that Works: Assuring Transformative Capabilities and Enabling a Digital Transformation” – aims to foster discussions and insights on how systems engineering can support the development of trustworthy AI systems, and how AI tools can in turn transform the practice of systems engineering and shape the workforce.
This event will be hybrid. Zoom links will be sent to ticket holders a few days before the workshop. For any questions on any topic, please contact SERC Communications Manager Alan Skontra.
Read about previous workshops.
Notice for U.S. Citizens and Non-U.S. Citizens
***Non-U.S. citizens are eligible to attend at the discretion of the organizers and must submit this security form no later than 30 days prior to the start of the workshop. This applies to attendees in person or virtual. The organizers will void and refund tickets for attendees who do not comply with this security protocol.***
***U.S. citizens must provide proof of citizenship via a valid passport or birth certificate at the welcome table when arriving at the workshop venue. An alternate option is sending a scan of your document in advance. Requests for advance submission must be made by contacting askontra@stevens.edu before September 10 at 12pm ET. Individuals who submit citizenship proof in advance will still need to show photo identification at the welcome table with a driver’s license or government ID card.***
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Morgan Dwyer, Head of Policy Operations, Open AI
Dr. Morgan Dwyer, Head of Policy Operations, OpenAI
Dr. Morgan Dwyer is the Head of Policy Operations at OpenAI, where she leads the development and coordination of the company’s public policy positions.
Prior to joining OpenAI, Dr. Dwyer served in multiple senior U.S. government roles, including at the White House, the Department of Commerce, and elsewhere in the federal government. At Commerce, Dr. Dwyer served as the Chief Strategy Officer at CHIPS for America, where she recruited, built, and managed a 50+ person team implementing the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan initiative to onshore semiconductor manufacturing. In this role, Dr. Dwyer directed the construction of a $39 billion investment portfolio, led teams that assessed investment opportunities for alignment with policy priorities, conducted technical and security due diligence, managed regulatory compliance, and advised on security, technology, workforce, international, and environmental policy. Read full bio.
Dr. Matthew Johnson, Chief of Responsible AI, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office
Dr. Matthew Johnson, Chief of Responsible AI, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office
Dr. Matthew Kuan Johnson serves as Chief of Responsible AI (RAI) for the U.S. Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO).
As the lead for Responsible AI, his Division builds the technical tools, assessments, best practices, governance processes, training, and culture within the Department that support the operationalization and implementation of Responsible AI and the DoD AI Ethical Principles – in addition to serving as the Department’s primary technical advisor on Responsible AI. Recently, his Division produced and issued the Department’s guidance on Generative AI development and use, based on insights from various research initiatives conducted and overseen by his team. Read full bio.
Sponsorship Opportunities
Opportunities to support the hosting of the AI4SE & SE4AI workshop include branded exhibit tables, resources for the networking reception, and more.
See the flyer with details, and contact Emily DeVito, Director of External Partnerships, GW Trustworthy AI Initiative at gwtai@gwu.edu.
View FlyerExecutive Panelists
Mr. Jay Meil
SAIC Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Chief Data Scientist
View Bio
Dr. Dimitrios Lymberopoulos
Head of Machine Learning, Palantir
View Bio
Mr. Eric Mortin
Founding Member, Analysis and Assessment of AI (3AI) Cell, U.S. Army DEVCOM Analysis Center
View Bio
Dr. Harrison Hyung Min Kim
Program Director at the US National Science Foundation, Professor and Donald Biggar Willett Scholar at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
View Bio
Dr. Matt Gaston
Director, AI Division at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute; Founding Director, SEI’s Emerging Technology Center
View Bio
Ms. Irene Helley
Vice President, Applied AI, Lockheed Martin
View Bio
Day 1 Agenda: Wednesday, September 17
Welcome Remarks
8:30 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speakers:
- Mr. Daniel Hettema, Director, Digital Engineering Modeling and Simulation, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
- Dr. Paul Kaminski, Chair of the SERC Advisory Board and Former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology
- Dr. John Lach, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, The George Washington University
Keynote Remarks
9:00 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speaker:
- Dr. Matthew Kuan Johnson, Chief of Responsible AI, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office
Morning Break
10:00 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Industry Executive Panel
10:15 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speakers:
- Ms. Irene Helley, Vice President, Applied AI, Lockheed Martin
- Dr. Dimitrios Lymberopoulos, Head of Machine Learning, Palantir
- Mr. Jay Meil, Vice President of AI and Chief Data Scientist, SAIC
- Dr. Dinesh Verma, Executive Director, Systems Engineering Research Center
SE4AI: Test and Evaluation 1
11:30 am
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 11:30 am | Ms. Carol Pomales, MITRE
Measuring AIES Trustworthiness - 11:50 am | Ms. Elena Charnetzki, MITRE
T&E of AI Enabled System Case Study – Intelligence Analysis with RA-LLM - 12:10 pm | Dr. Samantha Finkelstein, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
Discourse Analysis as a Diagnostic Lens into Dialogue Systems: LLM Evaluation Considerations Across Four Functionality Dimensions
AI4SE: Improving SE
11:30 am
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 11:30 am | Mr. Tom McDermott, Systems Engineering Research Center
Generative AI, Visualization, and the Future of Managing Megaprojects - 11:50 am | Dr. Heidi Davidz, ManTech
Elevating Digital Engineering Competency: An AI-Driven Metadata Analysis of Workforce Gaps and Systemic Failure Patterns in Systems Engineering - 12:10 pm | Ms. Erin Smith Crabb, Leidos
Axiom Me a Question! The Effectiveness of Visual Language Models in the Generation of Descriptive Statements for Systems Diagrams
Virtual AI4SE: Cognitive Assistants
11:30 am
Presenters:
- 11:30 am | Dr. Brad Dennis, Valkyrie Enterprises
Managing Complexity for LLM Software Co-Pilots Through Abstraction-Aware Context Modeling - 11:50 am | Dr. Ting Liao, Stevens Institute of Technology
Shaping Trust Through System Design: Human Perceptions of AI in Design Ideation - 12:10 pm | Mr. Yonas Ayalew, North Carolina A&T University
Risk-Informed Flight Scenario Planning and AI-Enhanced Decision Support in Aviation Domains (Note: this presentation is rescheduled from the SE4AI: System Design Processes that Support AI Across the Lifecycle session on September 18)
Lunch
12:35 pm
Army Perspective
1:40 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speaker:
- Mr. Edward Bauer, Director of the Systems Engineering Directorate, U.S. Army DEVCOM Armaments Center
Interactive Session
2:10 pm - 3:45 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Presenter:
- Mr. Sebastian Völkl, Dalus
Practical Approaches to AI-Driven Model Generation in SysMLv2 Environments
SE4AI: Test and Evaluation 2
2:10 pm
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 2:10 pm | Dr. Erin Lanus, Virginia Tech National Security Institute
Tailorable Risk-Informed AI Test and Evaluation Strategy - 2:30 pm | Dr. Mikel Petty, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Two Quantitative Methods for Measuring and Comparing the Performance of Binary Classifiers - 2:50 pm | Mr. Aditya Singh, The George Washington University
A New Test & Evaluation Regime for Human-AI Systems - 3:10 pm | Mr. Jon Vigil, OptTek Systems
Stress Testing Safety-Critical Learning Enabled Systems with Optimization and Adaptive Sampling
AI4SE: AI to Manage Complexity 1
2:10 pm
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 2:10 pm | Ms. Melissa Bradshaw, Lockheed Martin
A Lockheed Martin Case Study in Accelerating Systems Engineering with Generative AI - 2:30 pm | Mr. Yinchien Huang, Purdue University
Onto-Graph: AI-Driven Framework for Ontology-Guided Clustering and Hierarchical Structuring in System-of-Systems Engineering - 2:50 pm | Mr. Bryce Huffman, The George Washington University
Information Synthesis Workflows with Large Language Models: A Review of Current Practices, Opportunities, and Challenges in Literature Review Tasks - 3:10 pm | Mr. Zaid Kbah, The George Washington University
Leveraging Large Language Models for Logistics Information Extraction: A Case Study on Two International Disasters
Virtual AI4SE: AI to Manage Complexity
2:10 pm
Presenters:
- 2:10 pm | Dr. Dan O’Leary and Dr. Allison Ledford, Auburn University
AI- Enhanced DEMA: Transforming Implicit System Knowledge into Intelligent, Compliant, and Documented Processes - 2:30 pm | Mr. Avi Harel, Ergolight
Operation Design in the Fifth Industrial Revolution - 2:50 pm | Mr. Charles Collard and Dr. Mark Blackburn, Systems Engineering Research Center
Automated Knowledge Base Generation from Technical Documents Using Open-Source Large Language Models and Retrieval-Augmented Generation - 3:10 pm | Mr. Jayaprakash Kambhampaty, Georgia Institute of Technology
Generating Simulation Metadata with Large Language Models
Afternoon Break
3:45 pm
Interactive Session (continued)
4:05 pm - 5:30 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Presenter:
- Mr. Sebastian Völkl, Dalus
Practical Approaches to AI-Driven Model Generation in SysMLv2 Environments
SE4AI: Safety, Reliability, & Ethics
4:05 pm
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 4:05 pm | Mr. Phillip DiBona, Lockheed Martin
A Systems Approach for Governable & Sustainable AI - 4:25 pm | Mr. Bing Mak, Stevens Institute of Technology
Enhanced AI Decision Process for A-eVTOL System - 4:45 pm | Mr. Steven Senczyszyn, Michigan Technological University
Reinforcement Learning Qualification Process (RLQP): A Framework for Evaluating Safety and Robustness in Reinforcement Learning - 5:05 pm | Dr. Lance Sherry, George Mason University
Opportunities and Challenges in Integrating System Safety Models into SysML
AI4SE: Cognitive Assistants 1
4:05 pm
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 4:05 pm | Dr. Barclay Brown, Collins Aerospace
Open Local AI: An Open-Source Generative AI Approach for Sensitive Information - 4:25 pm | Mr. Hart Traveller, SysGit
Agile Engineering Enabled by Agentic Co-Modelers - 4:45 pm | Dr. Chris Helmerich, Celedon Solutions
Davinci: Transforming Systems Engineering Through Agentic AI Beyond Traditional LLMs - 5:05 pm | Ms. Nicole Manno, ManTech
A Modular Agent-Based Architecture for Digital Engineering (Note: this presentation is rescheduled from the SE4AI: System Design Processes that Support AI Across the Lifecycle session on September 18)
Virtual SE4AI: Test and Evaluation
4:05 pm
Presenters:
- 4:05 pm | Dr. Akond Rahman, Auburn University
Mis-classification Testing in Open Source Supervised Learning Projects - 4:25 pm | Dr. Elizabeth Mezzacappa, U.S. Army DEVCOM Armaments Center
Appropriate Levels of Human Judgement for Autonomy - 4:45 pm | Mr. Donghyun Ko, North Carolina State University
Learning Complex Degradation Signal Manifolds for Accurate RUL Prediction via Conditional Diffusion Models - 5:05 pm | Mr. Matthew Harris, SAIF Autonomy
Safe Experimentation with LLM-Controlled UAVs
Adjourn
5:25 pm
Reception
5:30 pm
Location: Greenwall in the Science and Engineering Hall
Day 2 Agenda: Thursday, September 18
Registration and Networking
8:00 am
SERC Perspective
9:00 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speaker:
- Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber, SERC Chief Scientist and Research Council Chair; Professor and Director of Strategic Initiatives, GW Engineering
Keynote Remarks
9:30 am
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speaker:
- Dr. Morgan Dwyer, Head of Policy Operations, OpenAI
Morning Break
10:30 am
SE4AI: Trust & Bidirectionality
10:50 am
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 10:50 am | Mr. Sami Saliba, Virginia Tech
Trusted Artificial Intelligence Challenge for Systems Engineering Results and Insights - 11:10 am | Dr. Nidhal Bouaynaya, Rowan University
Dynamic Risk-Fusion Framework for Human-AI Collaborative Aerial Threat Prioritization - 11:30 am | Ms. Jessica Lee, Arizona State University
Validating a Contextual Trust Assessment Instrument for AI-Enabled Systems Using the MASTOPIA Testbed - 11:50 am | Mr. Wilmer Maldonado, U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory
Retrieval Augmented Generation for Operations Order Evaluation
AI4SE: AI to Manage Complexity 2
10:50 am
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 10:50 am | Dr. Donald Koban, United States Military Academy
Maximizing the Usability of Publicly Available Information Through Improved USPI Filtering - 11:10 am | Mr. Henock Legesse, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
AI-Enhanced Requirements Traceability Using MBSE and Large Language Models for Complex Systems - 11:30 am | Dr. Jitesh Panchal, Purdue University
Guiding Large Language Models Through the Engineering Design Process Using Domain-Specific Knowledge Bases - 11:50 am | Mr. Zak Ouzzif, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Leveraging AI to Manage Technical Debt During Test and Evaluation in Aerospace Systems Engineering
Virtual SE4AI: Safety, Reliability, & Ethics
10:50 am
Presenters:
- 10:50 am | Ms. Lydia Zeleke, North Carolina A&T University
A Data-Driven Framework for Trustworthy Situational Awareness Application in DAA Systems - 11:10 am | Dr. Shi Feng, The George Washington University
Self-Preference Undermines LM Evaluation - 11:30 am | Dr. Thomas Serban von Davier, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
Operationalizing Tool Selection with an MLOps Tool Evaluation Rubric
Lunch
12:25 pm
Plenary Panel: Humans and AI Systems
1:25 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Speakers:
- Dr. Matt Gaston, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
- Dr. Harrison Hyung Min Kim, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Mr. Eric Mortin, U.S. Army DEVCOM Analysis Center
- Dr. Bryan Mesmer, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Interactive Session
2:25 pm - 3:30 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Presenter:
- Dr. Deri Draper-Amason, Old Dominion University Center for Mission Engineering
Operationalizing Mission Engineering with AI: Leveraging the IDMP User Story Framework for Digital Decision Superiority
SE4AI: Evolving Role of Digital Engineering
2:25 pm
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 2:25 pm | Mr. Bryant Baldwin, University of South Alabama
An Adaptive Guidance Tool for Enhanced Education in Systems Engineering - 2:45 pm | Dr. Peter Denno, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Design Choices for Human/AI Teaming on Complex and Long-running Endeavors - 3:05 pm | Ms. Laura Otero Hernandez, The George Washington University
Ship of Theseus Methodology for Creating Living Engineered Systems
AI4SE: Improving SE 2
2:25 pm
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 2:25 pm | Dr. Carlo Lipizzi, Stevens Institute of Technology
LLM-Augmented Pipelines for Validated System Model Creation: Extracting and Structuring Complex System Representations from Text - 2:45 pm | Dr. Kristen Jaskie, Prime Solutions Group
Agentic AI for Lifecycle Traceability: A Digital Thread Architecture for Adaptive, Context-Aware Systems Engineering - 3:05 pm | Dr. Julian Togelius, New York University
Autonomous Agents for Complex Simulations: A Compute-Efficient Imitation Learning Approach
Virtual AI4SE: AI Tools Workflows and Training
2:25 pm
Presenters:
- 2:25 pm | Mr. David Hetherington, System Strategy
Using LLMs to Accelerate text-based SysML Model Requirements Gap Analysis - 2:45 pm | Dr. Liang Zhang, Drexel University
AI in Systems Engineering Education: A Review of Curricula and Training Programs in the U.S. - 3:05 pm | Mr. Stephen Hilton, The George Washington University
The Impact of Subject Matter Background on Generative AI Use and Perception
Afternoon Break
3:30 pm
Interactive Session (continued)
3:50 pm - 4:55 pm
Location: Grand Ballroom
Presenter:
- Dr. Deri Draper-Amason, Old Dominion University Center for Mission Engineering
Operationalizing Mission Engineering with AI: Leveraging the IDMP User Story Framework for Digital Decision Superiority
SE4AI: System Design Processes that Support AI Across the Lifecycle
3:50 pm
Location: Room #307
Presenters:
- 3:50 pm | Dr. Tyler Cody, Virginia Tech and Dr. Peter Beling, University of Virginia
A Mission-centric Resilience Lifecycle and Test Framework for AI-enabled Systems of Systems
AI4SE: Cognitive Assistants 2
3:50 pm
Location: Room #308
Presenters:
- 3:50 pm | Dr. Michael Pennock, MITRE
AI-Enabled Mission Engineering - 4:10 pm | Dr. Paul Wach, Virginia Tech
Advancing Systems Engineering through a Mathematically-Rigorous Co-Pilot: From GPS Systems to Satellite Constellation Revectoring
Virtual AI4SE: Evolving Role of Digital Engineering
3:50 pm
Presenters:
- 3:50 pm | Dr. Nate Crews, Caltech Center for Technology & Management Education
Ethical Issues and Behavior Strategies in Implementing AI-Enabled Digital Twins for Complex Military Systems - 4:10 pm | Mr. Yvan Christophe, U.S. Army DEVCOM Armaments Center
Leveraging AI Agents for Adaptive, Data-Driven Requirements in Army Systems - 4:30 pm | Dr. Paul Wach, Virginia Tech
GenGroves: A Bridge Between Systems Engineers and Domain Experts
SE4AI Closing Review
4:30 pm
AI4SE Closing Review
4:30 pm
Adjourn
5:00 pm
Details
Venue
The George Washington University
- Address
- Washington, DC 20052
Organizer
Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC)
- serc@sercuarc.org
- Website
- http://www.sercuarc.org/