Bringing Visibility to Student Systems Engineering Research
The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), a University Affiliated Research Center of the US Department of Defense, is now accepting submissions for doctoral students to present at the 10th annual SERC Doctoral Student Forum.
The forum, which will be hosted virtually on Nov. 17 as part of the 14th annual SERC Research Review, unites a national network of researchers and practitioners in all sectors of the systems engineering (SE) research community — government, industry and academia — to discuss SE issues of national and global significance.
SERC is seeking a diverse pool of future leaders in the SE field to showcase their work at the student-focused event. Submissions are open to any student currently enrolled in a doctoral program at a SERC collaborating university, Minority-Serving Institution or Historically Black College or University.
Students conducting innovative SE-related research and exemplifying a passion for addressing the most challenging SE issues facing the Department of Defense and other federal departments and agencies are encouraged to submit.
Submissions will be evaluated and selected based on intellectual merit, clarity of vision and research impact. The students selected to participate in the forum will give a 30-minute presentation of their work. The SERC Doctoral Student Presentation Award will be given in recognition of potential impact, advancement of systems engineering, originality, technical content, as well as clarity of presentation. The award comes with a small monetary prize. All presentations will be virtual and recorded for open distribution.
In 2021, Christopher White, a Ph.D. student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, took home the SERC Doctoral Student Presentation Award for his SE research on decision-making under uncertainty, measurement error in value-based engineering and cognitive decision processes.
Additionally, the 2021 doctoral forum opened with two SERC research team tutorials. Dr. Mark Blackburn, a SERC Research Council member and Senior Research Scientist at Stevens Institute of Technology, led a tutorial on the NAVAIR Skyzer Surrogate Pilot Model that discussed the development of a “full stack” of models that links to a model-based systems engineering cost model. And Dr. Peter Beling, SERC Research Council member and Professor at Virginia Tech, led a tutorial on using modeling and simulation to support cyber resilience. The tutorial presented two methods that are based on more than six years of SERC research.
The deadline to submit to present at the virtual SERC Doctoral Student Forum is Sept. 30.