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One of the nation’s revered technology leaders dispenses anecdotes and wisdom on the slippery subject of engineering systems (or systems engineering). Norm Augustine just can’t get a handle on the discipline: “No one agrees on what it is, or what it does.” After years in industries like Lockheed Martin, Augustine has come up with “Norm’s Rules,” and can at least define ‘system’ as “having two or more elements that interact,” and ‘engineering’ as “creating the means for performing useful functions.” But these definitions don’t get you too far in the real world.

Augustine shows a fuel control system, which some engineers might view as part of a propulsion system. In turn, aeronautical engineers might think of the entire airplane as a system, and transport engineers view aircraft as merely components in systems incorporating airports, highways, shipping lanes. Augustine continues up the ladder until “our system that started as a fuel controller…seems to have the whole universe as a system.” Like Russian Matryoshka dolls, systems can always be embedded within larger systems. Even if you try to simplify a system in terms of just a few

The field of systems engineering has only recently emerged, and as this symposium demonstrates, defies precise definition. But MIT has taken this evolving area to heart, nurturing a new division and encouraging a raft of ventures that in their execution, may help shape the field for the next century.

An MIT freshman in 1900 had some very specific requirements to fulfill for graduation, and to prepare for a responsible role in society, says Subra Suresh. Courses included mechanical drawing, military science and rhetoric. These choices became richer over time, with the addition of hundreds of engineering faculty, dealing increasingly with the sciences. Suresh traces how over many decades an engineering concentration on metallurgy shifted from studying mining (iron), to aviation (aluminum), plastics, electronic materials and then biological materials. But at each step, he notes, MIT “always lagged behind about 10 years” in what it taught students.”

The Engineering Systems Division (ESD) is an attempt to “train people the right way.” The curriculum brings the basic rules of nature into engineering practice, and applies discoveries to products and processes that impact people. Students must take into

Real-world practitioners of systems engineering/engineering systems describe how the young discipline has shaped their very large enterprises.

For the past 10 years, David Lehman has been incorporating key systems engineering ideas within MITRE Corporation. Successes include getting project leaders to think about engineering solutions in the context of political and economic organization, and learning how to communicate these solutions better. MITRE has talked to defense acquisition managers in the field to extract data and create models that get disseminated to other managers. But Lehman is disappointed that Defense Department acquisition methods are still large-scale, and unresponsive to swiftly changing situations. He’d like to show program managers how “to step outside what they’ve been taught,” and create incentives for doing the right things rather than “sticking with regulations.”

Robert Skinner, Jr. wonders if engineering systems approaches can help with some pressing questions: the way to mix transportation and land use decisions in urban areas, for instance, or government pricing strategies for surface transport. One nettlesome issue involves the right scope of analysis, says Skinner. Should researchers be looking at the components of the transportation

Astronaut Mike Massimino returns to MIT and shares his experience on the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125). Topics include the challenges of space walking while repairing the Hubble, having the right tools on hand for high stakes repairs, and the long hours of practice that lead up to the task.

Welcomed back to MIT by AeroAstro professor Dava Newman as the first astronaut to Twitter from space, Massimino provides funny, personal and insightful anecdotes from the mission including the competition amongst his team to be the last human to touch the Hubble.

Accompanying Massimino on the mission was a rare book loaned from the MIT Libraries’ collections. The book, a limited edition facsimile of Galileo’s landmark publication “Sidereius Nuncius” (Starry Messenger), was chosen to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s astronomical research, the first recorded planetary observations using a telescope.

He presents the well-traveled book to MIT Libraries Director Ann Wolpert. She happily accepts the undamaged book and waives any late fees. The book traveled 5.3 million miles, making 197 orbits of the earth. It is now on display in an exhibit at the MIT Science Library.

It’s no exaggeration to say John Holdren’s job involves tackling the most critical issues of our age: economic recovery and growth, health care, energy, climate change, global pandemics, national security, ecosystem preservation…the list goes on. As President Obama’s science and technology advisor, Holdren leverages the resources and collective acumen of the nation’s researchers and innovators to address these complex and urgent matters. At an MIT AeroAstro hosted event, Holdren makes the case that aerospace science, technology and education will provide a “crucial contribution to and driver of many relevant capabilities” the U.S. will need to meet this century’s challenges.

He cites in particular the relevance of “nitty-gritty things like infrastructure” in aerospace research and industry -- -- including military and civilian satellites enabling earth observation and tracking for national security purposes or weather forecasting. These technologies engender “spin-offs into other domains of the economy, health care and the environment.” In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station are inspiring students to pursue science and engineering. Holdren hopes these young researchers will eventually pave the way to clean energy and a revitalized economy.

President

Road traffic is a challenging societal problem, and with the increasing crowding of areas in and around cities, it is only becoming worse. With the proliferation of wireless connectivity, smartphones (think cheap embedded computers), it is now possible to continuously monitor urban areas using mobile sensors carried by people while they drive.

In this lecture, Hari Balakrishnan describes three challenges that need to be met in using data to help commuters—pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers—reduce the time (and fuel) spent stuck in traffic: 1) accurate modeling of traffic delays while conserving energy and protecting user privacy, 2) accurate predictions of future traffic conditions, and 3) “traffic-aware” routing to provide credible, time-sensitive routes to users.

While not a transportation “guru” himself, Balakrishnan has applied his considerable background in computing and networking to creating applications that capture data and use it in ways that provides drivers with real-time, “traffic-aware” solutions.

The broad premise of The CarTel Project is that solutions do not require massive investments by governments, but can rely on the electronics that most of us carry with us every day—cell phones. The technology has been around for years, but dramatic changes in

The need for flexible management of supply chains to increase operational efficiencies could not be greater, as modern companies outsource and manufacture overseas. David Simchi-Levi observes that between 2003 and 2008 labor costs increased by 21% in Brazil, 19% in China, and 3% to 8% in other countries. Meanwhile, logistic costs, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), began to rise in 2003, after declining steadily. Adding to this unstable business mix has been tremendous volatility and fluctuation in oil prices.

While these challenging market factors have emerged, there has been an offset and gain from information technology and processing power: IT technology allows easier integration or decision support systems, more data is available, and processing time grows increasingly faster. According to Simchi-Levi, “ These improvements … are key to breakthroughs in logistics operations and management. As you think about managing a transportation system or supply chain with hundreds or thousands of facilities and products, computing power plays an important role. Optimization technology (the combined effect of algorithms and machines) means that some things in 1988 that took two months to solve, in 2004 they

Rich Wilson had followed the Vendée Globe Race ('round-the-world single-handed) since its inception in 1988 but had never considered sailing it himself—“too hard, too long, too dangerous, too risky, too, too, too, the boats were too big, the sails were too big.”

Then he reconsidered the possibility when he realized he could incorporate the race into a school program using all the aspects of this global sailing event. As a former Boston Public School teacher, he still felt a strong connection to young students and was certain his ‘sitesALIVE!’ program could get kids excited about the adventure. “They’ll pay attention if they don’t know how it’s going to turn out. The hardest thing about being a teacher is to get kids to pay attention.”

And with that Wilson put together his plan to sail the Vendée Globe in 2008-2009. He lined up newspapers from around the world to carry his story live as he was sailing The Great American III so his students could follow his journey. He put together a team of seventeen experts—maritime affairs, emergency medicine, tanker broker, sleep specialist among them—to complement his daily updates

Researchers who wish to study mobility patterns might be reaching for your phone. Increasingly, cell phones are equipped with locational receivers (Global Positioning Systems or GPS) and their bread crumb trails are opening up entirely new ways to study and predict the dynamics of travel. “We are in the GPS revolution because most PCS of tomorrow will be in our hands in the (form of) the smart phone”, according to Marta González. San Francisco is a city on the forefront of this revolution: there, willing cell phone users have voluntarily uploaded their GPS trajectories.

If that is the data of the future, it is still possible to study mobility patterns today, by conducting a secondary analysis of cell phone records. González cites an example from Europe, where she worked with cell phone billing data for 7 million customers. She examined a subset of 16 million records, which represented 100,000 users. Although individual locations could not be identified, Dr. González used a proxy variable, the cell phone tower from which a call originated or was received. Using a combination of parsing and data mining, the data was scaled

In the nineteen fifties and sixties, students of transportation focused on building infrastructure and applied lessons from the physical sciences to designing mobility. Mobility was facilely linked to the engines of economic growth and expanding GDP. In time, that perspective was replaced by a focus on transportation systems and networks. There was a newfound emphasis on environmental impacts, land use, and intermodal freight. There was also a growing concern on unpriced externalities. Today, Joseph Sussman explains, with many of those problems still unsolved, transportation has entered a new phase-- a period of immense complexity or CLIOS, which stands for complex, large scale, interconnected, open and sociotechical is an acronym that is becoming the mantra of transportation engineers. While it is not as far-reaching as "chaos" to a physicist, it is an approach with far-reaching consequences for the transportation field.

To participate in “Complexity 101” engineers must take account of stochastic systems, difficulties relating cause and effect, and non-linear behaviors. They must also recognize complex feedback loops between macro and micro issues; time scale anomalies, and evaluative complexity brought by new stakeholders. Sussman observes,