David Long
David A. Long has concentrated for more than twenty years on enabling, promoting, and applying model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to help advance the practice of systems engineering. David is founder and president of Vitech Corporation where he developed CORE®, a leading systems engineering software environment. He co-authored the book A Primer for Model-Based Systems Engineering and is a frequent presenter at professional events worldwide. A committed member of the systems engineering community, David is past president of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), now an 18,000 member professional society committed to sharing, promoting, and advancing the best systems thinking and engineering.
David holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science and Mechanics as well as a master’s degree in Systems Engineering, both from Virginia Tech.
For more than twenty years, David Long has concentrated on enabling, promoting, and applying model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to advance the practice of systems engineering. As founder and president of Vitech Corporation, David developed and commercialized CORE®, a leading systems engineering software environment now used worldwide. Throughout his career, he assumed key technical and managerial roles for refining and extending systems engineering that expands the analysis and communication toolkit available to practitioners. David continues to guide Vitech in the delivery of innovative and creative approaches for enterprise use in developing and deploying better next-generation systems.
A focused member of the international systems engineering community, David is serving as president of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), a 9000 member professional organization committed to promoting, advancing, and sharing the best of systems thinking, engineering, and analysis. He has served INCOSE since 1997, including a term as the Washington Metropolitan Area chapter president and international roles that include Member Board Chair, Director for Communications, and Director for Strategy.
David presents frequently at professional events worldwide, delivering keynotes and tutorials spanning introductory systems engineering, advanced applications of MBSE, and the future of systems engineering. His experience and efforts prepared him well to co-author the book A Primer for Model-Based Systems Engineering to help spread the fundamental concepts of this essential approach for meeting modern technological challenges. In 2006, David received the prestigious INCOSE Founders Award in recognition of his volunteer contributions.
Scott Midkiff
Scott F. Midkiff has been Virginia Tech’s Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer since 2012, reporting directly to the university President. From 2009 to 2012, Professor Midkiff served as the Head of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he was first appointed to the faculty in 1986. From September 2006 until September 2009, Scott Midkiff was on assignment as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Scott has prior industrial experience at Bell Laboratories (1979-1982) and at IBM (during summer 1977 and 1978). Previously, Midkiff was a visiting research associate at Carnegie Mellon University during 1985-1986.
As Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, Dr. Midkiff has responsibility for Virginia Tech’s overall strategy and vision for information technology. He leads the VT Information Technology organization which provides IT services for teaching and learning, research computing, network and telecommunications infrastructure, enterprise-level administrative systems, cyber security, identity management, and converged technologies for safety and security, and other functions.
Scott Midkiff received the B.S.E. degree, summa cum laude, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University (1979), the M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (1980), and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University (1985), where he was a MCNC Fellow. Professor Midkiff is a Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He is a founding editorial board member and Education department editor for IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine. He has been a technical program committee chair and member for numerous technical conferences in networking and pervasive computing.
As a faculty member, Dr. Midkiff conducts research in wireless networks, mobile systems, and pervasive computing. He is the author of over 125 refereed journal and conference publications. His research and education initiatives have been funded by the NSF through the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program; Digital Government program; Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Division; Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division; and Division for Undergraduate Education (DUE). Other sponsors have included the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Microsoft Research, Intel, IBM, and Catalyst Communications Technologies.
Dr. Midkiff has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in networking, wireless networks and mobile systems, network applications, telecommunications, and other areas of electrical and computer engineering and computer science. He contributed to the creation of Virginia Tech’s Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering and the online Master of Information Technology program. He co-developed the Networking module for the Master of IT degree. He has also developed or co-developed new courses in Network Application Design, Wireless Networks and Mobile Systems, Telecommunication Networks, and Network Architectures and Protocols. He received Virginia Tech’s XCaliber Award for teaching with technology in 2004 and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Engineering in 2005.
While at the National Science Foundation, Professor Midkiff served as a Program Director for the Integrative, Hybrid and Complex Systems (IHCS) program in the Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems Division in the Directorate for Engineering. He developed the cyber systems thrust area as the ECCS Division added “Cyber” to its name in October 2006. He was one of the two co-lead program directors to establish the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) initiative, first announced in September 2008, and co-led the team that managed the review and award process for the first year of CPS. Professor Midkiff was the lead program director for the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program’s theme on Autonomously Reconfigurable Engineered Systems (ARES) initiated in 2007. He also contributed to the management of the review and award process for the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program in 2008 and 2009; Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program in 2008 and 2009; Accelerating Discovery in Science and Engineering through Petascale Simulations and Analysis (PetaApps) solicitation in 2007 and 2009; EFRI Cognitive Optimization and Prediction (COPN) theme in 2008; Engineering Virtual Organizations (EVO) solicitation in 2007; and Cyberinfrastructure Experiences for Graduate Students (CIEG) supplements in 2008. While at the NSF, Professor Midkiff served on the NSF-wide IGERT Coordinating Committee (ICC) from 2007-2009; the NSF-wide Cyberinfrastructure Coordinating Committee (CICC) in 2009; and the Directorate for Engineering’s Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Working Group from 2007-2009, chairing the group in 2009.
In 2008, Professor Midkiff received an NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Innovation. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Omega Alpha, Phi Beta Kappa, and Tau Beta Pi honorary societies.
Dinesh Verma
Dinesh Verma served as Dean of the School of Systems and Enterprises and Professor in Systems Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, while concurrently serving as the Executive Director of the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), the first University Affiliated Research Center established by the DoD for Systems Engineering Research. He also serves as the Scientific Advisor to the Director of the Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven, Holland. Prior to this role, he served as Technical Director at Lockheed Martin Undersea Systems, in Manassas, Virginia, in the area of adapted systems and supportability engineering processes, methods and tools for complex system development and integration.
Before joining Lockheed Martin, Verma served as a Research Scientist at Virginia Tech and managed the Virginia Tech’s Systems Engineering Design Laboratory. While at Virginia Tech and afterwards, Verma continues to serve numerous companies in a consulting capacity, to include Eastman Kodak, Lockheed Martin Corporation, L3 Communications, United Defense, Raytheon, IBM Corporation, Sun Microsystems, SAIC, VOLVO Car Corporation (Sweden), NOKIA (Finland), RAMSE (Finland), TU Delft (Holland), Johnson Controls, Ericsson-SAAB Avionics (Sweden), Varian Medical Systems (Finland), and Motorola. He served as an Invited Lecturer from 1995 through 2000 at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom.
His professional and research activities emphasize systems engineering and design with a focus on conceptual design evaluation, preliminary design and system architecture, design decision-making, life cycle costing, and supportability engineering.In addition to his publications, Verma has received one patent and has two pending in the areas of life-cycle costing and fuzzy logic techniques for evaluating design concepts.
Dr. Verma has authored over 100 technical papers, book reviews, technical monographs, and co-authored two textbooks: Maintainability: A Key to Effective Serviceability and Maintenance Management (Wiley, 1995), and Economic Decision Analysis (Prentice Hall, 1998). He is a Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and is a senior member of SOLE, the Society of Logistics Engineers. He serves an a member of the External Advisory Board on Systems Engineering at SAIC, on the Systems Engineering Advisory Council (SEAC) of the Systems and Software Consortium, and the Advisory Board of the Center for Systems Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology.
Dinesh Verma was elected to Sigma Xi: the Honorary Research Society of America as a senior member and then elected to membership in Omega Alpha: the International Systems Engineering Honor Society.