Newswise — The University of Alabama in Huntsville has created a new interdisciplinary research organization — Center for System Studies —that will address the need for ‘systems thinking’ in industry and the government.
System studies involve research to understand the many complex ways that technology, nature, people, and society interact so that the workings of an engineered solution are more predictable and more desirable.
“The Tennessee Valley is the most highly concentrated aerospace, defense and energy work center in the world, and it is growing,” according to the center’s first director, Dr. Michael Griffin. “The Center for System Studies is poised to tackle the complex challenges which present themselves as organizations develop smart power grids, space launch vehicles, robotics, and missile defense, to name a few such important, sophisticated systems.”
The center received formal approval today by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees at a meeting in Tuscaloosa.
The center, which is unique in academia, will create the opportunity for UAHuntsville and the region to be recognized nationwide as a leader in the emerging systems discipline.
UAHuntsville President David Williams said the university is a logical home for these efforts. “We are not only close to the organizations with the needs, but we also have immense research capabilities and top students to apply to the problems,” Williams said. “Our community and region’s vitality depend on the workforce’s ability to design and manage complex systems. UAHuntsville will offer both solutions and ‘systems-smart’ graduates.”
Griffin pointed out that systems are worthy of investment and attention. “Small system failures might create inefficiencies and frustration for us in our daily lives. Large system failures, however, imprint on our collective memory stories of personal tragedies and our vulnerability as a nation.” Examples of such major system failures include the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia disasters, the Minnesota I-35 bridge collapse in 2008, and the great power blackouts of 1965 and 2003.
Griffin, a leading aerospace engineer and a former NASA Administrator, joined UAHuntsville earlier this year as the King-McDonald Eminent Scholar and Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
The center will be structured to apply and receive contracts and grants from government institutions and industrial clients and will work collaterally with existing university departments and research centers. Center personnel will consist of current UAHuntsville faculty, adjunct staff from the community and regional institutions and graduate students supported by contract research.
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