Author: ebj15101

UTC-IASE attends Mathworks Research Summit

Dr. Ebad Jahangir chaired the Education mini symposium at the MathWorks Research Summit where leading educators from across the globe presented and discussed future directions of computational education and thinking in university curricula.

UTC-IASE was invited by MathWorks to the fourth annual MathWorks Research Summit held June 4–6 at the Newton Marriott in Newton, Massachusetts. This invitation-only event serves to bring together inspiring peers from adjacent research areas and set directions that redefine the frontiers of research with impact and value. This multidisciplinary summit provides a forum for candid exchange with highly acclaimed thought leaders, industry and government experts, and MathWorks senior management about technical challenges, opportunities, and solution attempts to help focus and collaborate on promising research efforts.

The summit features lively discussions interspersed with exciting technical talks to disseminate knowledge, germinate ideas, inspire applications, discover successes in related fields, recognize trends, and identify research needs. Participants can also socialize and network with people who govern professional organizations, have experience in organizing research programs and projects, and share guidance on workforce teaching and training.

UTC-IASE to attend INCOSE International Symposium 2016

Professors George Bollas and Ebad Jahangir will be attending the INCOSE International Symposium 2016. They will engage with colleagues from the Systems Engineering community and share lessons learned on state-of-the-art methods and essential skills for Systems Engineers. UTC-IASE is a member of the INCOSE Corporate Advisory Board as well as its Academic Council.

INCOSE’s Annual International Symposium is the largest annual gathering of people who do systems engineering for four days of presentations, case studies, workshops, tutorials and panel discussions. The program attracts an international mix of professionals at all levels, and includes practitioners in government and industry, as well as educators and researchers.

Professor Krithi Ramamritham presents a distinguished lecture on smart technologies

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Professor Krithi Ramamritham from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and formerly of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, presented a distinguished lecture on smart technologies. Smart Energy solutions promise cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy. Smart Cities promise better quality of life for its citizens. He argued that for a “system” to be SMART, it should Sense Meaningfully, Analyze and Respond Timely. Using real-world examples from the domains of Smart Energy and Smart Cities, this talk illustrated the central role of data in being SMART.

To view more details or a video of the lecture, please visit http://iase.engr.uconn.edu/events/lec-lib/dll2016/.

Professor Calin Belta gives a seminar on formal methods for dynamical systems

Professor Calin Belta from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Division of Systems Engineering at Boston University, presented a seminar on formal method for dynamical systems at the UTC-IASE. Professor Belta, who is also affiliated with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) and the Bioinformatics Program, talked about an increasing need for computational tools for verification and control of complex systems from rich, temporal logic specifications. In control theory, complex models of physical processes, such as systems of differential equations, are usually checked against simple specifications, such as stability and set invariance. In formal methods, rich specifications, such as languages and formulae of temporal logics, are checked against simple models of software programs and digital circuits, such as finite transition graphs. The formal verification and synthesis problems have been shown to be undecidable even for very simple classes of infinite-space continuous and hybrid systems. The focus of this talk was on discrete time linear systems, for which it was shown that finite abstractions can be constructed through polyhedral operations only. By using techniques from model checking and automata games, this allows for verification and control from specifications given as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulae over linear predicates in the state variables. The usefulness of these computational tools was illustrated with various examples.

To view more details or a video of the seminar, please visit http://iase.engr.uconn.edu/events/sem-lib/sl2016/.

Professor Christos Georgakis presented a distinguished lecture on data-driven modeling

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Dr. Christos Georgakis is a Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Tufts University where he has also been the Bernard M. Gordon Senior Faculty Fellow in Systems Engineering. He described two generalizations of the classical design of experiments (DoE) methodology, the long-standing data-driven modeling methodology of choice. The first generalization enables the design of experiments with time-varying inputs, called Design of Dynamic Experiments (DoDE). The second generalization enables the development of a dynamic response surface model (DRSM) when time-resolved measurements are available. He discussed how both advances are able to contribute significantly to the modeling, optimization, and understanding of processes for which a knowledge-driven model is not easily at hand. He also argued that such approaches can be widely used in developing reduced-size meta-models, for online use in existing processes.

To view more details or a video of the lecture, please visit http://iase.engr.uconn.edu/events/lec-lib/dll2016/.

Dr. Quan Long gives a seminar on efficient Bayesian optimal experimental design for physical models

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Dr. Quan Long from United Technologies Research Center provided an overview of his recent research on Efficient Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design for Physical Models. Optimal experimental design is the key to improve data quality in engineering. Its application on real problems lags behind mainly due to the involved computational costs. Dr. Long has developed a series of methods to accelerate the computations of the utility function (expected information gain) under rigorous error control. Specifically, he has extended the applicable domain of Laplace methods from the asymptotic posterior Gaussianity, to where the shape of the posterior is characterized by noninformative manifolds. While Laplace methods require a concentration of measure, multi-level Monte Carlo method can be used to efficiently compute the nested integral of the expected information gain with a reduction of the computational complexity, even when the randomness of data dominants the shape of the posterior distribution. The developed methodologies have been applied to various engineering problems, e.g., impedance tomography, seismic source inversion and parameter inference of combustion kinetics.

To view more details or a video of the seminar, please visit http://iase.engr.uconn.edu/events/sem-lib/sl2016/.

George Bollas to Present at DYCOPS-CAB 2016

Dr. Bollas is scheduled to present work of his UTAS-sponsored project on Built-In Test Design for Fault Detection and Isolation of Aircraft Environmental Control Systems in the 11th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, including Biosystems (DYCOPS-CAB 2016), to be held in Trondheim, Norway, June 6-8, 2016. He will also co-chair the session “Performance and Fault Monitoring I” and chair the session “Process Optimization and Plantwide Control I.”

More information is available on the DYCOPS webpage: http://www.dycops2016.org/

UTC Engineers Honored for Completing UConn’s UTC-IASE Graduate Certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering

UTC Engineers Honored for Completing UConn’s UTC-IASE Graduate Certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering
UTC Engineers Honored for Completing UConn’s UTC-IASE Graduate Certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering

Five employees from divisions of United Technologies Corporation (UTC) were honored recently for completing their graduate certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering through the University of Connecticut’s UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (UTC-IASE).

Earl Lavallee and Sara Pacella of UTC Aerospace Systems; Xibei Ding and Ajay Phadke of Pratt & Whitney; and Cheryl Keiling of UTC Climate Controls and Security were honored during the UTC Technology Council meeting  in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, on Jan. 20, 2016.

Dr. J. Michael McQuade, UTC Senior Vice President, Science and Technology, presented the awards, and noted the potential of the engineers to drive revolutionary changes in the deployment of model-based systems engineering across UTC’s divisions.

He encouraged the graduating engineers to take leadership roles in advancing systems and controls engineering through rigorous modeling-based methods and tools.

The five honorees comprise the first cohort to complete the graduate certificate program. Each pursued the program’s Controlled Systems track.

The graduate certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering are offered under the UConn’s UTC-IASE umbrella. The UTC-IASE is a unique model-based approach to systems engineering — creating a new paradigm in interdisciplinary engineering education, research and outreach to industry.

The institute is a research and teaching establishment in the science and technology of complex systems, with a goal of revolutionizing the design of functionally superior, easy-to-use and maintain, safe, reliable, secure and trustable systems that are built from — and are dependent on — the combination of computational and physical components.

The UTC-IASE offers graduate certificates in Advanced Systems Engineering along three tracks: System Design, Controlled Systems and Embedded Systems. These certificate programs are extendable to Master degrees in engineering.

More information on certificate tracks or the Master of Engineering program can be found via contacts listed below:

Phone: 860-486-3355 | Fax: 860-486-2447

utc-iase@engr.uconn.edu

http://www.iase.engr.uconn.edu/

Ionnis Krevikidis from Princeton University offered a Distinguished Lecture at the UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering

Ionnis Krevikidis presenting his distinguished lecture

Professor Ionnis Krevikidis spoke about data, manifold learning, and the modeling of complex/multiscale systems on March 10, 2016 as a part of the Distinguished Lecture series at the UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering. He discussed some recent developments on the connection between data mining/machine learning on the one hand, and the modeling of complex/multi-scale problems on the other. The talk addressed the interface between fine scale, atomistic/stochastic codes and coarse-grained, macroscopic descriptions. In particular, Professor Krevikidis discussed (a) the reduction of stochastic simulations through diffusion maps and the use of the Mahalanobis distance, and issues of heterogeneous data fusion; (b) the issue of extending diffusion-map based simulations to new configurations/conditions; and (c) the issue of not only reducing the number of independent variables, but also reducing the number of independent parameters by taking advantage of data-mining tools.

Harrison Kim from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presented a Seminar in UConn’s UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering

Harrison Kim presenting his seminar

Professor Harrison Kim from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign presented a seminar on March 8, 2016 on the topic of “Complex Systems Analytics: a Promising Enabler for Sustainable Design and Manufacturing.” Designing large-scale, complex systems has been a challenging task, particularly in the predictive context of life cycle. Key challenges arise in various stages of system’s life cycle – pre-life, usage life, and end-of-life – where massive-scale data is generated and captured from complex systems design, operations, and disposal. Green Profit Design – a new term coined by Kim’s team – shows that there is a strong link between sustainable product design, user generated contents in the social network service, and corporate profit generation. Green Profit Design has been shown to be successful in designing optimal, sustainable product portfolio by use of engineering design optimization and knowledge discovery for user preference capture. In this presentation, Professor Kim presented a summary of the recent findings that there exists an optimal design and remanufacturing threshold for maximum benefit of profit and environmental impact savings. The projects are sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Deere and Co. – green, sustainable design and recovery; sustainable product family design and recovery; trend mining design for product portfolio optimization.