Staff

John Sokolowski, Ph.D.
Interim Executive Director of the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center
(757) 686-6232
jsokolow@odu.edu 

Before becoming Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center’s Interim Executive Director, Dr. John Sokolowski has been a research professor and director of research for VMASC since the fall of 2006. He is credited with expanding the areas and amount of research being conducted at the center, and he is an author and co-editor of Principles of Modeling and Simulation - A Multidisciplinary Approach, the first multidisciplinary textbook in the M&S field.

Sokolowski joined VMASC as a project scientist in 2001 after he retired from the Navy. At the time, he held a bachelor's degree in computer science from Purdue University and a master's in engineering management from ODU. In 2003, the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology awarded him a Ph.D. in modeling and simulation/engineering, the first degree of its kind to be earned worldwide.

Sokolowski became involved in M&S even before he joined VMASC. His last tour in the Navy was as leader of the M&S division of the U.S. Joint Forces Command. As director of research at VMASC, he has helped to build expertise "clusters" that focus on transportation, serious gaming, social sciences, computational sciences and artificial intelligence, and enterprise engineering. He also has strengthened the longstanding VMASC initiatives in military/homeland security and medical M&S.