Panel Discussion

Join us for this panel session of digital engineering leaders in the space domain. Across Government and industry organizations, the focus on digital transformation is a high priority. The necessary enablers for success in this transformation include an effective digital engineering (DE) environment/ecosystem.

Continuing advances in information technology facilitate a key DE goal to establish effective and adaptable DE infrastructure and environments to enable the cohesive implementation of DE across an organization, and between organizations across the enterprise. Effective DE requires a powerful and adaptable infrastructure and environment within which to operate. This includes the architecting, planning, implementation, sustainment, and continuous evolution of DE infrastructure and environments, including key aspects such as multiple security domains and complex Government-contractor enterprises.

The panel members will share their challenges and lessons learned in planning and implementing these DE environments at their organizations.

Schedule

Time	Topic	Presenter
10:00 AM	Introduction of Moderator and Panelists	Marilee Wheaton
10:20 AM	Presentation: Setting the Stage	Marilee Wheaton
10:40 AM	Panel Questions & Answers	Panelists
11:50 AM	Final Thoughts (10 mins)	Marilee Wheaton

Bios of Speakers

Mrs. Marilee Wheaton (Moderator)
Marilee Wheaton is a Systems Engineering Fellow in the Engineering & Technology Group at The Aerospace Corporation. She is the Co-Principal Investigator for the Enterprise Systems Engineering and Digital Engineering Corporate Strategic Initiative and the facilitator for the Model Based Engineering Community of Interest. She holds an Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Spanish from California Lutheran University. A Fellow of the Society of Women Engineers, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), she is the current INCOSE President-Elect.

---

Mr. Steven J. Martin
Steven J. Martin is the Deputy of the Systems Engineering Division at the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), Los Angeles Air Force Base (AFB). He has worked for the United States Air Force, and now Space Force, for over 30 years and has participated in many areas of weapon systems acquisition. In his current position, he aides program offices in switching to Digital Engineering and Agile methods as well as overseeing the implementation of policy, guidance and training involving Digital Engineering on space vehicles.

Prior to his current position at SMC, Mr. Martin was the Chief Engineer for the Force Protection Division at Hanscom AFB near Boston, MA. This division provided the Air Force with the systems needed to protect critical assets around the world, locate and defeat improvised explosive devices as well as secure air fields in the war zones, and keep our nuclear weapons secure. He arrived at Hanscom AFB after completing his MBA at MIT’s Sloan Business School and his first position at the base was supporting the Chief Architect to transition the Air Force’s IT systems on to the cloud. Before he went to MIT, he was the Weapon Integration Technical Expert at Edwards AFB, California. He provides technical oversight for weapon testing such as air-to-air missile launches, smart weapon drops, and conventional bomb releases. Most of this testing was conducted in conjunction with the development of new aircraft, upgrades in aircraft hardware and software, or integration of new weapons on existing aircraft.

Mr. Martin began his career at Edwards AFB testing the weapon delivery accuracy of the F-16 aircraft, after graduating from the University of Illinois in 1989 with a Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. He also worked on the introduction of GPS on the F-16 aircraft, the use of laser guided bombs, and the development of advanced air-to-air missiles and the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). During his time working at Edwards, he also earn two addition degrees including a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and Masters in Mechanical Engineering from California State University-Fresno. In his free time, Mr Martin enjoys sailing, working of cars, creating “internet of things (IoT)” projects with Arduino processors, and developing the cloud based applications for his wife’s (Karen) business.

---

Dr. Maged Elaasar
Maged Elaasar is a Senior Software Systems Architect at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He technically leads a JPL-wide strategic R&D program called Integrated Model Centric Engineering (IMCE). The mission of the program is to transform systems engineering into a rigorous, agile, and data-centric practice, and infuse it in JPL’s robotic space missions. Prior to that, Maged was a Senior Software Engineer at IBM, where he led the R&D of various software and systems modeling technologies. Maged is also the founder of Modelware Solutions, a company based in California that provides development, consulting, and training services in the area of model based engineering (MBE).

Maged’s expertise in MBE spans both technology and practice. On the technology side, he currently leads openCAESAR, an open source software solution that aims at streamlining the practice of model based systems engineering (MBSE) for projects building complex cyber physical systems. Before that, he led the development of Rational Software Architect and Design Management, both popular commercial UML/SysML modeling tools from IBM. Maged has also been actively contributing to open source modeling platforms like Papyrus. He has also been leading modeling standards at the OMG like SysML (contributor) and UML (co-chair). On the practice side, Maged has been a systems architect, specifying the architecture of complex systems in aerospace, where he has co-developed the Executable Systems Engineering Method (ESEM), which supports automated systems analysis using model execution techniques.

Dr. Maged is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University. He is also a lecturer in the department of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research and development interests span model-based systems engineering, model-driven software engineering, semantic web technologies, analytics technologies, and cloud-computing technologies.

---

Dr. Mark McKelvin
Dr. Mark McKelvin is a Senior Project Lead in Digital Engineering at The Aerospace Corporation and a Lecturer in the System Architecting and Engineering graduate program at the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering. In his current role at The Aerospace Corporation, he serves as the technical authority for implementing digital engineering across the space enterprise for a variety of customers. He earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley with an emphasis on design, modeling, and analysis of embedded and cyber-physical systems, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Clark Atlanta University.

---

Mr. Christopher Delp
Chris Delp is the Technical Group Supervisor for Systems and Software Solutions Engineering at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His interests and background span areas including, systems engineering, software development, safety-critical software, and Model-Based Systems Engineering, and he has worked several space projects including, the Deep Space Network, Curiosity, and Europa Clipper. Chris develops innovative architecture and comprehensive modeling techniques to realize cross-cutting efficiencies among varied engineering disciplines. In previous roles, Chris is responsible for managing the Environments for Systems and Software development tools for JPL Flight Projects. He successfully conceived of and delivered a world-class environment for Model-Based Engineering and safety-critical software development and developed a modern systems engineering approach that combines human centered design and Model-Based Engineering. Chris holds a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona.