On Friday February 21st, the INCOSE Natural Systems Working Group Community of Practice Webinar guest presenter was Mr. Kennie Jones, a member of NASA Langley’s Complex Aerospace Systems Team sanctioned by LaRC Center Leadership to explore new methods in engineering to solve growing problems facing NASA and the nation.
There was an introduction to the INCOSE Natural Systems Working Group and then Kennie addressed what their team is doing and how he personally hopes Natural Systems can play a part in their work.
Abstract: Although NASA is successful at building systems, there is alarming concern over cost and schedule overruns and other issues throughout the design life cycle. We are finding that, while systems are delivered meeting requirements, they do not always perform as expected. The cause of this may be due to the rapidly increasing complexity resulting from interactions of thousands of components designed by large teams producing emergent behavior and operating in increasing uncertainty. A major goal of the team is to explore methods that can move us from designing to requirements, beyond resilient systems, towards adaptable systems that can not only survive but can thrive in uncertain, even unknowable environments. It is a personal goal of Dr. Jones to explore how application of concepts from natural systems may solve some of these problems.
Bio: Kennie H. Jones is a senior computer science researcher in the Electromagnetics and Sensors Branch of the Research Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, USA. He has a B.S. degree in Biology from Christopher Newport College, Newport News, VA, and a M.S. And Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA. He has over 30 years of experience in information management, computer graphics, computer system design, and modeling and simulation. His current research interests are in the application of biological concepts to the development of large-scale sensor networks and autonomous systems. Dr. Jones is a member of NASA Langley Research Center's (LaRC) Complex Aerospace Systems Team sanctioned by LaRC Center Leadership to explore new methods in engineering to solve growing problems facing the Agency and the nation.
For access to the meeting recording, send a note to nswg-info@incose.org