Ivica Crnkovic is a professor of industrial software engineering at Mälardalen University, Sweden, where he is the administrative leader of the software engineering laboratory and the scientific leader of the industrial software engineering research. His research interests include component-based software engineering, software architecture, software-intensive systems, software configuration management, software development environments and tools, as well as software engineering in general. Before his academic career he worked in industry for more than 15 years, in ABB, Sweden, and Koncar, Croatia. More information about Ivica Crnkovic is available here.
During seven years the two Universities - Mälardalen University in Sweden and University of Zagreb in Croatia, have performed a course Distributed Software Development. The aim of the course is to train the students to develop software for software intensive systems in a distributed environment in which students never meet physically but only over the cyberspace using different internet- and web-based technologies. The students from 5-10 countries participate in the course each year. The cultural differences and additional challenges in a project development in a distributed environment are detailed.
Gunnar Hult has a PhD in Information Theory and an MA in Slavic and Semitic Languages and Political Science. He is Deputy Swedish National Armaments Director and Chief Scientist at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (the Swedish Armed Forces Procurement Agency), and adjunct professor at the Swedish National Defence College. His interest in the sessions topic stems mainly from his extensive involvement in, and experience from, various European collaborative defence programs, run within organizations such as NATO, the European Defence Agency and OCCAR, as well as bilateral programs between Sweden and many other European countries.
Hermann Kaindl joined the Institute of Computer Technology of the Vienna University of Technology in early 2003. Prior to moving to academia as a full professor, he was a senior consultant with the division of program and systems engineering at Siemens AG Austria. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Distinguished Scientist member of the ACM and a member of the INCOSE. More information can be found here.
Prof. Kaindl’s specific interest in the session’s theme primarily originates from the multi-national EU-funded research project CommRob. Under his guidance, this project decided in favour of applying systems engineering methodology and found that the initial effort for requirements engineering and architecting fully paid back in the course of the development, even though resulting in research prototypes ‘only’. While most of the people from distributed and diverse organisations were initially unfamiliar with the systems engineering methodology, such a stable architecture and fast integration would most likely not have been achieved without its (partial) application.
Christine Pohl-Winkelmann is as a training manager responsible for the SE training in Astrium EADS. She studied mathematics with a specialization in IT and worked for a big German steel and machine tools company and a strategy consultancy (Roland Berger and partners) before joining Astrium in 1999. Three courses are offered at Astrium in the SE field: ASSELP (Astrium Systems Engineering Logic and Processes; 10 days, theory and case project work), SEQ (Space Systems Engineering Qualification; 43 days, project work included, addressing also social skills), and ASEP (Advanced Systems Engineering Practices; 7 days in 2 modules, look over the rim, other company views, EADS view) meant for engineers with respectively 3-6, more than 7 and more than 10-15 years experience. Participants come from Astrium companies all over Europe.
Viktor Batovrin is head of the Information Systems Department at the Moscow State Institute of Radio engineering, Electronics and Automation (Technical University) - MIREA. Up to today MIREA trained about 15,000 students. Prof. Batovrin teaches systems engineering and information systems design courses at MIREA and he also gives systems engineering courses at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) - MIPT and National University of Science and Technology "MISIS" (MISIS). Jointly with Prof. A. Kostogryzov he has prepared a Russian version of ISO/IEC 15288 that was established as a national standard in 2005.
Prof. Batovrin’s specific interest in the session’s theme is the relationship of Systems Engineering with other disciplines like Project Management, Quality Management, Software Engineering and others, the interaction between demands from Russian IT industry and SE education and the possibility of using foreign Systems Engineering experience, taking into account cultural differences and traditions.
Maarten Bonnema is an assistant professor at the Laboratory of Design, Production and Management of the Faculty of Engineering Technology at the University of Twente. He studied Electronic Engineering, and did a two-year designer course on Technical Systems. He has worked as a Systems Engineer at ASML. In 2006 and 2007 he was involved in the design of a wafer stepper at MAPPER lithography. His research involves supporting system designers, conceptual design and mechatronic design. He teaches design in general, systems engineering and is a tutor in various student projects.
“Systems engineering education at academic level should occur on several levels: inform about the systems engineering approach and tools, involve students in system design projects, and execute a system design project themselves. ‘Inform’ and a little bit of ‘Involve’ can be done in the bachelor program. The master program can be used to expand the ‘Involve’ment. ‘Execute’ is for PhD level students, preferably with some industry experience. A special type of PhD can be developed where training and knowledge capturing is combined. This is for future investigation.”
Paolo Gaudenzi was trained as a civil engineer and obtained a PhD in Aerospace Engineering before joining the Università di Roma La Sapienza in 1990, where he is Professor of Aerospace Structures at the School of Aerospace Engineering. He teaches several graduate and PhD regular courses at the Università di Roma La Sapienza, and some special courses for companies (Alenia Spazio and CSM-Tecnopolo) as well as an international courses (ASI-NATO). His Research topics are aerospace structures and constructions, laminated and composite structures, active materials and intelligent structures, finite element modelling. He is promoter of the European Union/La Sapienza stage program EUROSPACESTAGES for Master students.
In his opinion System Engineering should be part of the curricula of many engineering courses, such as Aerospace engineering. From the educational viewpoint the emphasis should be as well on the "vision" on the complexity that characterizes complex engineering systems and the relevant mission or performance as, on the other side, on the tools available for developing systems engineering practices.
Gerrit Muller worked for more than 20 years in industry. Since 2000 he moved gradually towards academia, focusing on developing system architecture methods and the education of new system architects, see Gaudí systems architecting website. In 2004 he received his doctorate. In January 2008 he became a full professor of Systems Engineering at Buskerud University College (BUC) in Kongsberg, Norway. BUC introduced a unique master study in Systems Engineering, where students combine working in practice and studying. The connection between theory and practice by reflection is actively stimulated.
David Olwell is Professor of Systems Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he recently completed a five year term as department chair. His research interests are reliability engineering and statistical quality control. He previously was on the faculty of the United States Military Academy."
Martin Wilke has been strongly involved for the last years in setting up SE training, first within the German chapter of INCOSE (GfSE), also being a member of the industrial council of the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, and in the recent years also for some industries, both national (German) and international (Europe). ....."It is interesting to observe the different experiences in teaching SE at the TU München and for Industry, for SE beginners and advanced trainees".
Paola Di Maio of the Cutter Consortium, University of Strathclyde, is a multi-lingual knowledge engineer and has a background in information systems and publishing. After completing a Masters in Information Systems she pioneered early investigation of Content Management platforms (founded content-wire.com), and later maintained the focus on Internet and Web developments, in particular the gap between academic research and practice. She publishes regular industry reports on Business Intelligence, and specialises in 'open innovation' and Digital Ecosystems, advises the management of industry and academia on recent trends in system of systems engineering, and how to leverage emergence across sectors. She also lectures and her work contributes to curricular development internationally.
Petter Krus got his PhD in 1988 at the division of Fluid Power Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Linköping University. He continued at the department as assistant professor. In 2001 he became professor in Machine Design at Linköping University, and in 2009 he moved to a position as Professor in Fluid and Mechatronic Systems, Linköping University. His research interests are: System modelling and simulation, CAD design automation, design analysis and optimisation, with applications in hydraulics, construction machines, road vehicles, and aircraft.
Hermine Schnetler has been a Systems Engineer for 25 years; initially working in the Defence industry on products such as inertial navigation systems for aircraft, helmet sighting systems and helicopter mounted sighting systems. She joined the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre five years ago and is the Head of Group Systems Engineering. She defined and successfully introduced a process for systems engineering tailored to the astronomy domain and has been also involved in a number of instrument studies, which have benefited from the systems engineering process. She has a first degree in Electronics Engineering and an MSc in Systems Engineering. She followed this with a PhD in Software Engineering. Dr Schnetler is the chair for the International Council on Systems Engineering Scottish Local Group.
In her opinion a well defined systems engineering process promotes both innovation and creativity. It can be compared with the work of novel writers, where they are very creative, but usually they have to build a structure and a framework before they can focus on the actual writing. The systems engineering process provides you with exactly that: a structure and framework to work within. For example, if you look at the methods and tools provided by inventive problem solving techniques such as TRIZ it is clear that it maps pretty much onto the Systems Engineering process.