Jon Wade

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

The last few years have made it clear that the world is entering a new phase in which sustainability is of paramount importance to the survival and well‐being of our global societies. This paper describes the strategic plan for the Institute for Convergent Systems Engineering which is addressing the challenge of ethical sustainability in which soci...

A University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) is a highly valued engineering, research, and development resource to the federal government, largely within the US Department of Defense (DoD). Only 15 exist, all under special authority of the US Code. The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), established in 2008, was the first UARC established...

System engineering education is challenged to address the need posed by rapidly changing technology epitomized by Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation. In particular, there are relatively slow and inaccurate feedback mechanisms between the needs of employers, students and universities at the level of educational program content development....

Systems Engineering (SE) education is challenged to address the needs posed by rapidly changing technology epitomized by Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation. In particular, there are relatively slow and inaccurate feedback mechanisms between the needs of employers, students and universities at the level of educational program content develo...

We believe that our education systems are currently not capable of evolving at the rate necessary to meet the challenges presented by rapidly changing technology epitomized by Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation. Our research project goal is to pilot a learning laboratory that can be used to conduct the necessary experiments to create and a...

This paper presents a novel assessment method for Systems Thinking and its supporting competencies. Systems Thinking is a key component in engineering education, providing students with the means to explore, understand, and design engineered systems both holistically and in terms of the relationships between their components, which can be both tech...

This paper describes the goals, methods, approaches, and preliminary results of research to develop a Digital Engineering Competency Framework (DECF) for the acquisition workforce. Evidence across the Services and industry has affirmed digital engineering is a critical practice necessary to support acquisition in an environment of increasing global...

Artificial intelligence is at a tipping point where the technical capabilities it enables are outstripping systems engineers’ ability to employ it in viable systems. This paper reviews the very large scale integration (VLSI) revolution enabled by Mead and Conway in the late 1970's and the lessons learned from this experience. It applies these princ...

In the original version of the book, the spell error in third author name “Hortense Gerado” should be corrected as “Hortense Gerardo” in chapter “Systemic Design Engineering”. The correction chapter and the book have been updated with the change.

This paper describes a methodology, Systemic Design Engineering, that integrates systems thinking for sustainability, design thinking for human centricity, and systems and software engineering for implementation efficiency. Based on these operating principles, an integrated set of learning objectives for this approach are described. A supporting sy...

The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), a US University Affiliated Research Center, developed the 2014–2018 Technical Plan to provide the vehicle by which to align the SERC Vision and Research Strategy with the US Federal Government Sponsor’s top research priorities. This paper summarizes the SERC Vision, the Sponsor’s needs, and the SERC’s...

This paper describes a methodology, Systemic Design Engineering, that integrates systems thinking for sustainability, design thinking for human centricity, and systems and software engineering for implementation efficiency. Based on these operating principles, an integrated set of learning objectives for this approach are described. A supporting sy...

The Experience Accelerator is a new approach to developing the systems engineering and technical leadership workforce, aimed at accelerating experience assimilation through immersive, simulated learning situations where learners solve realistic problems. A prototype technology infrastructure and experience content has been developed, piloted, and e...

This paper describes a program organized by the INCOSE Academic Council to determine future directions in systems engineering (SE) research. This program, consisting of three collaborative workshops, uses a framework coupling societal needs to systems challenges and then to gaps in the capabilities of SE, which inform the direction of future SE res...

This paper presents the challenges in ensuring the existence of a workforce this is capable of conceiving, realizing and supporting increasingly complex systems throughout the lifecycle. Accomplishing this will require that all systems decision makers are systems thinkers, all engineers have systems engineering skills, and all systems engineers are...

The U.S. defense industry spends billions of dollars each year developing defense systems to keep the nation and allies secure. However, the failure rate of system development is notoriously high. Even when development efforts do succeed, they often do so with cost overruns and compromises in system performance. As a result, large amounts of money...

This paper proposes a complete set of systems thinking skills for use across many different disciplines. The paper places particular emphasis on the ability to assess each of the skills quantitatively, a comprehensible description of the skills, and the completeness of the set. The proposed skills derive from a review of the literature, the applica...

The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator (SEEA) is a new approach to developing the systems engineering and technical leadership workforce. The project aims at accelerating experience assimilation through immersive, simulated learning situations where learners solve realistic problems. A prototype of the technology infrastructure and experien...

Systems engineers sometimes have a bit of an identity crisis. As a multidisciplinary approach, systems engineering overlaps with other disciplines and this can make it difficult to differentiate between what systems engineering “is” and “is not”. Using Sheard's 1996 work on systems engineering roles as a starting point, in 2014 the Helix project be...

The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator (SEEA) is a new approach to developing the systems engineering and technical leadership workforce. The project is aimed at accelerating experience assimilation through immersive, simulated learning situations where learners solve realistic problems. A prototype of the technology infrastructure and expe...

This paper proposes a complete set of systems thinking skills for use across many different disciplines. The paper places particular emphasis on the ability to assess each of the skills quantitatively, a comprehensible description of the skills, and the completeness of the set. The proposed skills were derived from a review of the literature, the a...

The Concept Phase of Systems Engineering, also known as Design, is most critical for it determines most of the cost, complexity and value of a system. Given the interdisciplinary nature of Design, it is no wonder that a wide variety of tools and approaches have been developed to aid in addressing design problems. Even within the engineering communi...

This paper investigates a composable design methodology leveraging SysML to manage mission flexible product lines, and reviews the application of this methodology to a spacecraft product line. This methodology extends the SysML language with a mathematical and Boolean constraint language allowing for the capture of product line rules as an alternat...

This paper presents the results of our research into cooperation in Government Extended Enterprises, a type of system of systems. The effort proposed and evaluated a novel theory that these decisions are the result of the interaction of four canonical forces—Sympathy, Trust, Fear, and Greed. A computational simulation involving the Stag Hunt game e...

Available at: https://peer.asee.org/the-experience-accelerator-tools-for-development-and-learning-assessment

This work proposes a framework for effective quantification and comparison of system complexity content when architecting systems. Properly interpreted results from complexity analysis help make better informed system architecture selection between competing designs since the increased complexity of a system can lead to increased fragility and more...

This paper addresses our continuing research into the canonical forces affecting cooperation in Government Extended Enterprises (GEE), a type of system of systems (SoS). This paper shows how we implemented the proposed theory and presents a detailed sensitivity analysis of the underlying computational model. We found that the proposed model has a s...

Traditional systems engineering is predicated upon prediction and control. Prediction is required to attain some degree of confidence that design and manufacture decisions will yield desired results. Control is necessary to ensure that subsystems meet the needs of the overarching system. While this paradigm was successful for decades, evolving circ...

This paper proposes a definition of systems thinking for use in a wide variety of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the development and assessment of systems thinking educational efforts. The definition was derived from a review of the systems thinking literature combined with the application of systems thinking to itself. Many different def...

As systems become more complex, there is an increasing need for systems engineering expertise. At the same time, many senior practitioners are approaching retirement creating a need to more rapidly develop expertise in their replacements. There have been several studies in other fields addressing how experts develop their skills but not to a signif...

In an effort to explore the relationship between the disciplines of systems engineering and software engineering, professionals from academia, industry, and government gathered for a workshop to deliberate on the current state, to acknowledge areas of inter-dependence, to identify relevant challenges, and to propose recommendations for addressing t...

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly relied on to provide functionality and value to products, systems, and infrastructure in sectors including transportation (aviation, automotive, rail, and marine), health care, manufacturing, and electrical power generation and distribution. [1] In this paper, we describe the critical importance of syst...

Research has been conducted to learn how systems engineers develop their expertise. One finding is that many expert systems engineers credit teaching for part of their development. This paper summarizes the overall research results and expands on this particular finding. It addresses factors related to learning by teaching and how the systems engin...

Difficulty predicting system behaviors introduces a certain level of complexity to a system design. The INCOSE systems engineering handbook indicates that system complexity is one of the seven key challenges influencing development when engineering a system of systems. The scope of this paper is first to survey systems engineering relevant definiti...

25th International Forum on COCOMO and Systems/Software Cost Modeling presentation

The purpose of the Vision 2025 is to inspire and guide the direction of systems engineering across diverse stakeholder communities, which include: • Engineering Executives • Policy Makers • Academics & Researchers • Practitioners • Tool Vendors This vision will continue to evolve based on stakeholder inputs and on-going collaborations with professi...

Systems engineering increasingly addresses the system lifecycle, as opposed to its more traditional role focusing on design and development. This new situation results in part from the recognition that upstream design and deployment decisions have potentially significant cost and performance implications post-deployment. For military systems, the r...

Composability is a systems architecture and design concept focusing on composing new systems from known components, designs, product lines, and reference architectures as opposed to focusing on “blank sheet” designs based on requirements decomposition alone. The concept of composability has been a goal of the US Department of Defense (DoD) for many...

This paper will illustrate and analyze various examples of incorrect credibility assessments that were made during crisis situations by decision makers. These situations include incorrect credibility assessments from assumed subject matter experts, computers and automated systems, distrust between groups and rumors. Various factors during an emerge...

Research conducted in the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) examined military rapid capability and urgent needs programs and identified a framework for rapid development. Discussions with organizations engaged in rapid development indicated a number of different definitions of “rapid”, a wide range of specific practices that were implement...

Programs that develop and deploy complex systems typically have multiple criteria by which they are judged to be successful. Categories of such criteria include schedule, cost, technical system performance, quality and customer expectations. Criteria are operationalized via particular metrics, and often there are complex relationships between metri...

Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior systems engineers. Systems engineers are critical for addressing a broad set of increasingly complex systems problems faced by industry and government. However, the discipline is experiencing an outflux of senior systems engineers reaching retirement ag...

Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior systems engineers. The workforce challenge is to shorten the time it takes for a systems engineer to reach the senior level. The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator research project was conceived as a critical response to these needs and challeng...

Much has been written about what systems engineering is, what systems engineers do, what defines competency, and how to teach systems engineering. There has been significant research in other fields about how expertise is developed. This paper reviews key elements of that research and looks at its applicability to systems engineering and how it cou...

With much of the current systems engineering workforce reaching retirement age, there is a critical need to develop work experience among new systems engineers. Increasingly, educators and employers are turning to educational technology-based approaches to aid in this process. One such effort is the Experience Accelerator, an on-going research proj...

Intelligent/smart cities have been touted as one of the solutions to the challenges of ever increasing complexities faced by present and future urban environments. Leveraging information technology to allow better demand and supply management of key urban infrastructure system offer immense opportunities for efficiency and quality of service improv...

This article proposes a very high-level, abstract framework of Damage Mitigation to enable the architecture and design of trusted systems, those that dependably perform a mission while minimizing or eliminating the probability of significant, unintended damage. This framework is based upon the premise of system imperfection, consisting of a Trusted...

The goal for the initial phase of the systems engineering Experience Accelerator (ExpAcc) research project is to demonstrate the ability to leverage technology to accelerate the time it takes to mature a systems engineer. To demonstrate this goal, the ExpAcc team is developing a prototype simulator for demonstrating the ability to increase the lear...

The subject of risks has been studied by many scholars and researchers, but it is less well documented from the perspective of systems life cycle (SLC) management. This paper aims to study risk factors that are likely to occur during the life cycle development of systems engineering (SE) projects. A survey was conducted to gather risk information b...

The systems engineering Experience Accelerator (ExpAcc) is a research project in the early stages of definition and development that is focused on validating the feasibility of leveraging simulation technology to create a series of experiences that will accelerate the maturity of systems engineers. This paper leverages the approach being defined fo...

Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) education is not adequate to meet the emerging challenges posed by ever increasing Systems and Societal demands, the workforce called upon to meet them and the timeframe in which these challenges need to be addressed. The goal of Experience Accelerator Program is to transform the education of SE by creating a ne...

The Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly faces a mix of relatively foreseeable and unforeseeable threat and opportunity profiles. This means that DoD technological superiority relies on rapid and assured development, fielding, and evolution of progressively more complex and interoperable defense systems. Meeting these challenges requires DoD to...

This report investigates the current approaches to Concept of Operations (CONOPS) development in use in various DoD and commercial organizations with the goal of understanding why CONOPS creation is such a lengthy process, and how the process can be made more agile. A number of CONOPS are cataloged and analyzed to understand which parts of the curr...

A dynamic associative processor cell is described. The cell stores three states (0, 1, and X) and performs read, match, and masked-write functions. Five MOS transistors are used, including two overlapping dual-gate structures available in MIT's CCD/CMOS technology. Dual-gate CCD transistors are used to reduce the charge-spooning current, which can...

The design, implementation, and experimental results for a ternary content addressable search engine chip, known as the Database Accelerator (DBA), are discussed. The DBA chip architecture is presented. It is well suited to serve as a coprocessor for a variety of logic search applications. The core of the DBA system is composed of novel high-densit...

The design of a novel dynamic content addressable memory (CAM) cell suitable for high-density arrays is described. The proposed cell is capable of storing three internal states: ONE, ZERO, and `don't care' (MASK). The cell consists of five NMOS transistors of which four are used to store and access data and one is used as a diode to isolate current...

This paper describes the design of a novel dynamic Content Addressable Memory (CAM) cell suitable for high density arrays on the order of 64K bits. The proposed cell is capable of storing three internal states; '1', '0' and "don't care" (MASK). The cell consists of five NMOS transistors of which four are used to store and access data and one is use...

Supervised by Charles G. Sodini. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-186).