Date: April 18, 2012
Location: Amphora Restaurant
1151 Elden St.
Herndon, VA
Start Time: 6:00 PM
Registration: Register Here
Cost: Members can pay via Paypal on Registration page. For non-members, payments will be collected via cash or check at the event. Please do not mail cash or check to the location of the event.
-Non-members: $20
-INCOSE-WMA members: $10
-Student Division members: Free
Menu:
The menu consists of Caesar salad, choice of one entree, and carrot cake. Entree choices are:
-Chicken Cordon Bleu with ham and Swiss cheese, served with mashed potatoes and vegetable
-Grilled pork loin chops (2), served with roast potatoes, vegetable, and apple sauce
-Penne pasta with vegetables (Vegetarian)

Description: This month’s dinner meeting will feature two senior capstone presentations from George Mason University’s Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department. These presentations are the result of a two-semester long project, where undergraduate students are involved in a real-world systems engineering application with a corporate sponsor, and will be competed in late April in national systems engineering competitions.

First Presentation: “Health Care Analytics: Design of Decision-Support System for Optimal Prescription Drug Coverage”
Presenters: Chris Anderson, Joey Fadul, Anupam Menon, Harold Terceros
Abstract: The healthcare system in the United States is currently undergoing changes aimed at providing affordable care, but the complexity of the healthcare industry prevents patients from making optimal healthcare decisions, insurance decisions, and achieving the full potential of healthcare reform. As a consequence of healthcare reforms, digital medical records have facilitated the widespread availability of publicly available, statistical data. Feeding the pool of expanding data is the patient-doctor interaction. Averaging twenty minutes, physicians assess the patient’s complaint and prescribe a course of action.
Pharmaceutical and insurance companies work together to build suitable products for consumers. The intricate relationships in the healthcare industry aid in furthering the runaway healthcare costs facing the American public. The data collected provides the basis for a decision support tool for patients to compare and rank Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans based on a patient’s individual situation and preferences. A decision support tool will collect user data and provide explicit information that will assist the user in determining the most suitable prescription drug plan, taking into account the individual importance of plan attributes. Utilizing historic data, comparisons on prescription spending will be made to past patients who have a similar health-profile as identified by the current user.
The results of the tool will change for every user, based on their health profile. Along with the plan rankings, the tool also relays the monthly premium, deductible, number of prescription drugs covered, and estimated savings based on a selected plan. Tools such as the one described in this paper enable patients to make decisions with a full understanding of choices, associated risks, and sensitivities. Based on the success of these tools, it is likely that this will become a standard way of doing business and that these tools will be found in doctor’s office waiting rooms, and on insurance provider’s websites helping enhance the customer’s knowledge base; breaking the barrier to the insurance industry.

Second Presentation: “Design of a Sustainable Oyster Aquaculture Business for the West and Rhode Rivers”
Presenters: Amy Crockett, Amir Delsouz, John DeGregorio, Alan Muhealden, Daniel Streicher
Abstract: he West and Rhode Rivers (WRR) are two mezohaline sub-estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Water quality in the WRR has declined due to local runoff of excess nutrients and total suspended solids (TSS) entering from the Chesapeake Bay. Previous research identified the feasibility of using large colonies of bi-valves (e.g. oysters or clams) in the river to remove the excess nutrients. An experiment conducted by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) failed to establish a colony of clams due to naturally arising variability in salinity levels.
Unlike clams, oysters are resilient to variations in naturally occurring environmental conditions. However, due to a lack of frequent reproduction by the oysters and the current budget climate which makes prolonged government funding minimal, a business is needed to sustain the restoration of health of the rivers. The goal is to evaluate the feasibility of funding the resilient, yet slow growing oyster colony.
This presentation will discuss the alternative designs and the three simulations used to determine the survivability and growth of the oyster biomass, the filtration potential of the growing oyster colony and the sustainability of the aquaculture system as a business.

Date: March 13, 2012
Location: Amphora Restaurant
1151 Elden St.
Herndon, VA
Start Time: 6:00 PM
Cost: $20.00

Presentation Title: “The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE)”
Presenter: Dr. Arthur Pyster
Description: The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE) Project is a community effort that is creating the authoritative Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and the Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE). BKCASE, which began in 2009, as a joint project of Stevens Institute of Technology and the Naval Postgraduate School, is sponsored by the Department of Defense through the Systems Engineering Research Center with primary support from INCOSE, the IEEE Computer Society, and dozens of volunteer authors from around the world. Both the SEBoK and GRCSE are being developed incrementally with cycles of public review and are now mature enough for early adoption. By the end of 2012, version 1.0 of both documents will be published. Of special note is the use of wiki technology for the SEBoK, which will enable much more rapid evolution and update of the SEBoK through broad community input than would be possible if it were published as a traditional PDF document. This talk will explore the history of the BKCASE project, explain the content of both the SEBoK and GRCSE, and discuss their anticipated use.

About the Presenter: Arthur Pyster is a Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology and the Deputy Executive Director of the Systems Engineering Research Center, a Department of Defense University Affiliated Research Center. Before joining Stevens in March 2007, he served as the Senior Vice President and Director of Systems Engineering and Integration for SAIC. Earlier, he served as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Federal Aviation Administration and held several other executive, management, and technical roles in systems and software engineering. Dr Pyster is an INCOSE Fellow, their Director for Academic Matters, and sits on their Board of Directors. He has a PhD in computer and information sciences from Ohio State University. His recent research has focused on advancing the systems engineering workforce and the systems engineering discipline through leadership in the BKCASE Project, which is producing the authoritative systems engineering body of knowledge and a graduate reference curriculum for systems engineering.

Menu: TBD. Please check back soon.