ODU’s Tolk in Demand as Lecturer, Author on Interoperability and Composability of M&S Systems
November 16, 2012
Old Dominion University systems engineering and engineering management professor Andreas Tolk has logged many frequent flier miles this fall, speaking about his worldwide expertise into interoperability and composability of modeling and simulation systems.
In early October, Tolk gave a keynote lecture, "Mathematical Foundations of Interoperability and Composability," at the 2012 Military Communications and Information Systems Conference in Gdansk, Poland.
Based on the success stories of many engineering solutions, interoperability is often seen as something that can be worked into a system after the fact, Tolk stressed in his talk. In fact, he argued, as more and more applications in the military communications and information systems domains are model-based applications, that model is being scrutinized, and could lead to a paradigm shift in how we look at federating our systems in support of international operations.
When he returned to the United States, Tolk flew to San Antonio to deliver a plenary talk at the Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation Conference, conducted for the first time in this country.
At that conference, Tolk referenced the "Truth, Trust and Turing" theory he addresses in the new book he edited, "Ontology, Epistemology, and Teleology for Modeling and Simulation." In the book, published by Springer in August, internationally recognized experts in philosophy of science, computer science, and modeling and simulation contribute to the discussion on how ontology, epistemology and teleology will help enable the next generation of intelligent modeling and simulation applications.
Tolk dedicated the book to late ODU colleague Zia-ur Rahman, who was killed in a car crash in 2010. "We had many good discussions on related philosophical topics while he was here at ODU," Tolk said.
Tolk received the first technical merit award of the Simulation Interoperability Standardization Organization for his groundbreaking work on interoperability and composability. He is co-author of "NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment" and the author/editor of the textbook "Engineering Principles of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation."