At the end of November, WPI hosted the 6th annual INCOSE fall workshop in partnership with the INCOSE New England Chapter. Held at WPI’s historic Higgins House, the day featured engaging discussions, remarks, and presentations by industry professionals, WPI professors, and students.
Breakfast and coffee welcomed attendees as they settled in. Brian Sheehan, INCOSE NE Board Member and Systems Engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc., opened the event with remarks. He was followed by Bill Luk, INCOSE NE President and Point of Contact for BAE Systems North America within the NDIA SE and AIA Engineering committees, who also thanked event sponsors and staff. Luk introduced the day’s important theme: The Artificial Intelligence Landscape in Systems Engineering.
John McNeil, Dean of Engineering at WPI, took the stage to welcome attendees and introduce WPI. He shared WPI’s history related to Systems Engineering and AI, along with insights on how AI could impact higher education. Larry Mallak, Academic Director for WPI’s Systems Engineering Program, then delivered the keynote presentation, Systems Engineering on Fire. Starting with a realistic AI avatar introducing himself, Mallak then engaged the audience with an interactive trivia quiz offering prizes for winners. He discussed how AI transforms work and daily life, posing the thought-provoking question, “Am I obsolete or more productive with AI?” before opening the floor for questions.
After a short break, Shamsnaz Virani Bhada, Assistant Professor at WPI, and her graduate student, Krish Patel, presented on Systems Engineering and Technical Debt. Their talk covered AI-enabled policy content modeling and mitigating technical debt using AI. Mark Vriesenga, Chief Engineer of Information Analytics at BAE Systems, followed with The Myths and Truths of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. He addressed eight common myths, such as “AI applies to any problem” and “ChatGPT is thinking.”
During the lunch break, attendees enjoyed a student poster presentation competition held in the Higgins House sunroom.
The afternoon resumed with Tom McDermott, CTO at the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), presenting on trust and trustworthiness in AI-enabled systems. Ali Raz, Assistant Professor at George Mason University, discussed integrating AI in a SoS environment. The event concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Shamsnaz Virani Bhada on the role of AI in Systems Engineering education and practice, featuring Carlo Lipizzi (Stevens Institute of Technology), Jyortimay Gadewadikar (Raytheon Technologies, Pratt and Whitney), and Cameron Hendricks (MITRE).
A special thanks to our workshop sponsors: Dassault Systèmes, BAE Systems, Inc., and Draper. We look forward to hosting more workshops in the future!