Engineering
Systems Symposium
Issues
“Call to Arms”
by
Lois
Slavin, ESD Communications Director
On
March 29-31, 2004, the Engineering
Systems Symposium brought over 360
leading academics, industry and
government representatives, and
students to MIT to learn from each
other about the emerging field of
Engineering Systems and to consider
ways to work together. The Symposium,
a “call to arms” organized
by MIT’s Engineering Systems
Division, was sponsored by the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation, the Cambridge-MIT
Institute, the MIT Industrial Liaison
Program, and MIT School of Engineering.
“This
Symposium is a remarkable, perhaps
historic, event of great import
to engineering education and to
our Institution,” remarked
MIT President Charles M. Vest in
the opening session. “If we
are to continue to be a great Engineering
school in the future and help address
complex problems like anti-terrorism,
the Columbia Shuttle tragedy, globalization
and sustainability in ways that
benefit humankind, we will need
to be great in Engineering Systems.”
Vest
thanked Associate Dean of Engineering
Systems Daniel Roos, for his intellectual
perseverance in cultivating “the
emergence of this embryonic field”
and helping establish MIT’s
Engineering Systems Division in
1998. He added that Roos and fellow
ESD Co-Director Professor Daniel
Hastings make a very effective team.
He also praised Institute Professor
Joel Moses, who co-chaired the Symposium
Committee with Professor Thomas
Allen, for his “tremendous
vision of the intellectual excitement
and real-world importance of the
field.”
The
Symposium began with an overview
of the evolution of engineering
by MIT Visiting Professor Thomas
Hughes, MIT Professor David Mindell
and Roos.
Hughes
shared observations and examples
of the “elegant simplicity”
of early engineering and the “messy
complexity” of modern large
scale systems, while Mindell discussed
the development of Engineering Science
as a discipline by Vannevar Bush
and others at MIT. Mindell then
showed how various aspects of Engineering
Systems in business (operations
research), politics (oil; the Vietnam
war) and other arenas (the Apollo
program; the Columbia tragedy) led
to the realization that a broader,
systems approach was needed, one
that embraced the broad, complex
socio-political context in which
technological innovations were occurring.
Roos,
co- author of the ground-breaking
best-seller, The Machine that
Changed the World, described
several characteristics of the emerging
field of Engineering Systems, noting
“Today’s engineers need
to understand the multi-dimensional
complexity of the context in which
technological innovations occur,”
he explained. “Often this
leads to unanticipated emergent
properties. Engineers must learn
to anticipate them and to deal with
the long term implications.”
Roos
then went on to outline the formation
of MIT’s ESD in December 1998
and its dual objectives; To create
a new field of study, and tio broaden
Engineering education and practice.
The
remainder of the Symposium consisted
of panels and presentations by industry,
government and academic leaders who
gave examples of engineering systems
in their arenas, stressing the imperative
for a collaborative interdisciplinary
approach among all three sectors.
Speakers included:
-
MIT School of Engineering Dean
Thomas Magnanti, who emphasized
that developing leaders must be
a key part of Engineering Systems
because “complex systems
are a complex business.”
-
Institute Professor Sheila Widnall,
a member of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board, who described
the technical cause of the shuttle
disaster and the long-standing
organizational and managerial
context which allowed the tragedy
to occur.
-
Professor Fred Salvucci, who shared
lessons learned from the political
and economic issues and their
interplay with the engineering
challenges of the Big Dig and
the Boston Harbor Cleanup
-
William Wulf, President of the
National Academy of Engineering
, who called for an inclusion
of macro-ethics in Engineering
Systems, so that engineers consider
not only their own individual
actions, but also the resultant
interactions with society, sustainability,
and policy.
-
Dr.
Joseph Bordogna, Deputy Director
of the National Science Foundation,
who emphasized the importance
of including people in the Engineering
Systems picture
-
A
range of Engineering leaders from
MIT, Cambridge University, UK,
Carnegie Mellon, Delft University
of Technology, George Mason University,
Georgia Tech, Stanford, University
of Arkansas, University of Michigan,
University of Virginia, University
of Southern California and others
who shared information on their
academic programs and thoughts
on moving forward collaboratively
to define the emerging field of
Engineering Systems
-
Thought-leaders and industry experts,
among them best-selling authors
and consultants James Champy and
Michael Hammer; Chief Scientist
of the Singapore Ministry of Defense
PC Lui; inventor and former executive
director of AT&T Bell Laboratories’
Communications Sciences Research
Division Robert Lucky
-
ESD Co-Director Daniel Hastings,
who called for focus on developing
a new generation of engineering
leaders through an emphasis on
Engineering Systems.
-
Travis Engen President of Alcan,
who emphasized the importance
of corporations considering sustainability
in developing and implementing
projects that effect society.
A
key feature of the Symposium was
the release of the Engineering Systems
Monograph by ESD faculty and staff
. In addition to the paper by Roos
on the history leading to ESD’s
creation of ED and a paper by Hastings
on the future of ESD, there are
six papers in the Monograph on the
foundations of Engineering Systems.
A framing paper on foundational
issues by Joel Moses is followed
by five papers on various aspects
of the field. Dan Whitney was principal
author of a paper on systems architecture,
Richard de Neufville played a similar
role in a paper on uncertainty,
Tom Allen wrote on enterprise systems,
David Marks on sustainability and
Nancy Leveson on systems safety.
The Monograph papers can be found
at http://esd.mit.edu/symposium/monograph/
The
remaining papers presented at the
Symposium can be viewed at http://esd.mit.edu/symposium/agenda_day3.htm.
At
the Symposium, Roos announced that
over 20 of the top Engineering schools
in the US and Europe have agreed to
work collaboratively to define and
evolve the field of Engineering Systems
by sharing educational materials and
information on job opportunities for
Ph.D.s in Engineering Systems, and
holding inter-university student colloquia.
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