 | Dr. Azad M. Madni is a Professor of Astronautical Engineering and the Technical Director of the Systems Architecting and Engineering Program in University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. He is also a Professor (by courtesy) in USC’s Schools of Medicine and Education. He is the founder and Chairman of Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc., a high tech R&D company specializing in game-based educational simulations, and methods, processes, and tools for complex systems engineering. He received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research has been sponsored by both government research organizations such as DARPA, OSD, ARL, RDECOM, ONR, AFOSR, DHS S&T, DTRA, NIST, DOE and NASA, and aerospace and automotive companies such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Motors. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institution for Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), and the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS). His recent awards include: 2016 Boeing Lifetime Accomplishment Award and 2016 Boeing Visionary Systems Engineering Leadership Award for contributions to industry and academia (awards received in Boeing’s 100th anniversary); the 2016 INCOSE RMC Special Award for pioneering, industry-relevant contributions to Transdisciplinary Systems Engineering; the 2016 Distinguished Engineering Educator Award from the Engineers’ Council; the 2016 Outstanding Educator Award from the Orange County Engineering Council; the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Council on Systems Engineering, the 2013 Innovation in Curriculum Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the 2012 Exceptional Achievement Award from INCOSE, the 2011 Pioneer Award from the International Council on Systems Engineering. He serves on the USC’s Council of the Center of Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things (CCI), and Steering Committee of USC Provost’s STEM Consortium. His research interests include formal and probabilistic methods in systems engineering, model-based architecting and engineering, engineered resilient systems, cyber-physical systems, and exploiting disciplinary and technology convergence in systems engineering. He is listed in the Who’s Who including in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in Industry and Finance, and Who’s Who in America |
 | Dr. Michael Sievers is a Senior Systems Engineer at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has more than 30 years experience in real-time embedded systems, fault-tolerance, mission safety, high-performance computing, computational biology, VLSI, and system software. He earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. At JPL Dr. Sievers was the avionics architect for multiple, high profile national defense and research spacecraft. He was the Principle Investigator for a team of scientists and engineers developing a supercomputer system for an extremely high temperature and caustic environment application as well as researching the design of a supercomputer for a cryogenic, quantum computing application. He is currently the Project System Software Engineer and fault protection lead on a major national defense system and conducts research into model-based systems engineering and resiliency. Prior to joining JPL, Dr. Sievers was the architect and chief engineer on projects including ultra-dependable nuclear power plant safety systems, train control, and aircraft subsystems. He was also the software architect and software lead for a highly parallel, pipeline bioinformatics processor. Dr. Sievers is an Adjunct Lecturer in the System Architecting and Engineering Program at the University of Southern California and has more than three dozen publications. He is an AIAA Associate Fellow, Senior Member of the IEEE, Member of INCOSE, Member of Sigma Xi, and Member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon. |