Andreas Tolk

I am Chief Scientist for Complex System Modeling in the Modeling and Analysis Innovation Center of The MITRE Corporation. The main objective of our work is to apply leading edge research for the society, often focusing on support of the US Government. Until recently, I have been a professor for systems engineering and engineering management at Old Dominion University, and I am still an adjunct faculty member. As such, I am interested in methods and solutions that bring the engineering side and the management side of organizations closer together. As I hold a PhD in Computer Science, the use of computer-based methods became my focal point. However, as a systems engineer - or better a system of systems engineering scholar - I know very well that conceptual challenges cannot be solved by throwing tools at someone. Only when mature technology, educated workforce, and supporting management come together, a solution will be successful. Within this group of tools, modeling and simulation is my main domain of expertise. Modeling deals with the conceptualization of problems, simulation deals with implementing the resulting models. A lot of my research has been funded by the armed forces, so many applications are in the defense and security domain. However, we successfully moved insights into other domains as well, e.g., results on interoperability - simulations running together - and composability - models can be applied together - for medical simulation systems. The levels of conceptual interoperability model (LCIM) was successfully applied in defense, energy, security, and more domains. I mainly write to educate engineers to better understand what they are doing and for what they are doing it, and for managers to understand what engineers need in order to do their job. I also write to take the myth and the magic out of mathematical solutions. Examples are descriptions of modeling and simulation applications as well designed programmed production systems, not magic mirrors that can do more than human beings, or agent-based systems as the logical next step of object-orientation, not a mystical new method that creates emerging knowledge. I always try to get some life experience into this as well, as learning just from books as a rule is pretty boring ... but I hope that you find my books helpful nonetheless.