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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.