The SERC received two awards at the 31st Annual INCOSE International Symposium, held online this year from July 17-22: the Best Theme Editors Award and the Best Article Award. The awards recognized the SERC’s curation of and contributions to the March 2020 issue of INSIGHT, the International Council of Systems Engineering’s (INCOSE) magazine, themed AI and Systems Engineering and featuring exclusively content from SERC-affiliated contributors.
Best Theme Editors was awarded to the members of the SERC’s leadership team who curated the issue: Dr. Dinesh Verma, Executive Director; Mr. Thomas A. McDermott, Jr., Deputy Director; and Ms. Kara Pepe, Assistant Director. The Theme Editors selected articles produced by SERC researchers that illustrate the SERC’s ongoing research in and align with the issue’s theme of addressing the challenges to leveraging augmented and artificial intelligence (AI) for systems engineering (AI4SE) and the transformation needed in systems engineering methods, procedures, and tools (MPTs) to develop systems with embedded AI that are fit for purpose and do no (unintended) harm. The SERC articles featured in the INSIGHT March 2020 issue are within the scope of the broader systems community initiative on the future of systems engineering (FuSE) that has AI4SE and SE4AI as an initial project.
Best Article was awarded to the issue’s lead article, “AI4SE and SE4AI: A Research Roadmap,” authored by Mr. Thomas A. McDermott, Jr., Deputy Director, Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis, Chief Scientist, Research Council members Dr. Peter Beling and Dr. Mark Blackburn, and Dr. Mary A. Bone. The article overviews the SERC-developed roadmap that structures and guides AI and autonomy research, and presents key underlying Digital Engineering transformation aspects that enable automation of traditional SE practice and encourage new practices that support automated, adaptive, and learning systems. The awarded lead article maps the March 2020 issue’s subsequent articles to the roadmap’s research areas—Enterprises and Systems of Systems (ESoS), Trusted Systems (TS), Systems Engineering and Systems Management Transformation (SEMT), and Human Capital Development (HCD)—as well as the roadmap’s mission areas: Velocity, Security, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomy.
The invitation to curate the INSIGHT March 2020 issue and the awards received affirm the SERC’s leadership in working to close the gap between the state of practice and the state of research in the field of systems engineering. INSIGHT’s mission is to provide informative articles on advancing the state of the practice of systems engineering, and as such is an apt vehicle to accelerate the dissemination of the SERC’s knowledge and research.
It was an honor for the recognition to be presented at INCOSE’s Annual International Symposium, the largest worldwide annual gathering of people who do systems engineering. This year’s 31st annual event, themed Accelerating through Adversity, was held online July 17-22 and attracted an international mix of professionals at all levels, including practitioners in government and industry, as well as educators and researchers, to share ideas, network, build competency, pursue certification, contribute to the advancement of the profession through collaboration on tools, processes and methodologies, learn about new offerings in training and education, and forge new partnerships.