Researcher

Throughout his career, Art Pyster has played a leading role with systems and technologies in telecommunications, aerospace, defense, air traffic control, and computing.

Dr. Pyster’s proudest professional accomplishments are (1) standing up and operating the Systems Engineering Research Center, which is the largest and most impactful academic research program in systems engineering in the nation, (2) leading the development of the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK), which has been accessed well over 1 million times and is the most widely read source on systems engineering, (3) applying novel engineering processes at Digital Sound Corporation to develop extremely low-defect commercial telecommunications systems; and (4) as the FAA’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, leading the Federal Aviation Administration’s information security efforts, software research program, and IT policy development, and serving on the FAA’s investment review board which oversaw more than $3 billion annually.

At Mason, Pyster is a professor of systems engineering, but his primary role is associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC). In that capacity, Pyster oversees the CEC research portfolio which has rapidly grown to an anticipated value of over $400M with annual expenditures approaching $70M. Pyster continues to oversee the SEBoK which is sponsored by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the IEEE Systems Council, and Stevens Institute of Technology. He is an INCOSE Fellow, Founders Award recipient, and Pioneer Award recipient. Pyster has authored more than 70 papers and two books.

Education:

PhD, Computer and Information Sciences, The Ohio State University

MS, Computer and Information Science, The Ohio State University

BS, Mathematics, University of Illinois