Publication

The need for new project incubation is an integral part of the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) 2019-2023 technical plan as there continues to be a significant need to identify and cultivate new ideas that may become critical research programs that address emerging challenges. The SERC performs research on 18-20 active tasks on well-defined topics that are aligned with the SERC’s research strategy. While this research has great potential to have a transformative impact on systems engineering in both DoD and the intelligence community, it is also important to identify and nurture new ideas that may become the critical research programs for emerging challenges.

The open proposal call period was March 14-May 1, 2019 with the objective of identifying and developing several short white papers outlining research programs with a significant potential to improve the practice of systems engineering. A total of 58 responses were received.

Each of the received proposals were reviewed by the Research Council except where they noted a potential conflict of interest. Each member provided a final score based on an equal weighing in each of the following four criteria as well as a set of short comments:

• Intellectual Merit
• Clarity of Vision
• Past Performance
• Potential Strategic Impact

The sponsor independently reviewed the projects based on these criteria then met with the PI to discuss final selections. In this case, the selected eight proposals were favorably reviewed by the Research Council. It was believed by the sponsor that interviews were not necessary to make the final determination of the awards.

Of these, the following eight proposals were selected:

1. Models for Efficient Testing (MET)
2. Explaining Model Composability using Causal Graphs
3. Verification & Validation (V&V) / Test & Evaluation (T&E) Competencies
4. Validation of AI-Enabled and Autonomous Systems
5. Fostering human learning from cognitive assistants for design space exploration
6. Architecting Digital Twins for Model-Centric Engineering: A Combined Semantic Modeling and Machine Learning Approach
7. Ecology-Inspired Technique for Resilience Evaluation of Engineered Systems of Systems
8. Quantifying Mission Impact for Technology Alternatives

This report contains the white papers that was supported by each of these eight funded proposals.