ODU Professors Participate in Homeland Security Summit

Andreas Tolk, associate professor of engineering management and systems engineering, and Adrian Gheorge, endowed chair in system of systems engineering, gave presentations at the second annual Homeland Security Education Summit in College Park, Md., March 18-19.

The conference was hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, and the topic was "Innovation in Homeland Defense and Security Education." Gheorghe contributed two lectures, "Homeland Security Related Issues with 'Minor League' Nuclear Infrastructures: Critical Topics on the Decommissioning of Research Reactors" and "New Methodologies for Understanding the Transboundary Risks of Aging Critical Infrastructure: Innovations in Vulnerability Assessment and Decision Support Systems for Homeland Security Education."

"Our contribution showed how to support multi-organization processes with a federation of their heterogeneous IT-solutions using engineering principles," said Tolk. "Many good presentations were given on application-specific solution and policy constraints, but the Old Dominion contribution was one of only very few recommending practical approaches to set up the supporting infrastructure using system of systems engineering expertise."

Tolk, who gave a presentation titled "Model-based Data Engineering for HLS Applications," emphasized the importance of getting the wide range of solutions on display to work in a more harmonious system.