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: February 16, 2012
Location: Amphora Restaurant
1151 Elden St.
Herndon, VA
Start Time: 6:00 PM
Cost: $20.00

Topic: “Too Much Data: How to Find What You Value”
Panelists: Don Joder, Doug Whall, Peggy Hwu

Description: Our Dinner Meeting on February 16, 2012, will include a lively and entertaining moderated panel discussion of issues arising from the Systems Engineering community’s efforts to effectively work with increasingly large and complex data collections. Our three featured panelists, Don Joder, Doug Whall, and Peggy Hwu, are senior systems engineers with lots of battle scars from tackling architecture, design, integration, sharing, quality, security, and other data management challenges in a variety of organizational and technical contexts. Topics to be discussed include data architecture, data modeling, semantic computing, “Big Data”, data security, data’s role in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and the data management implications of cloud computing. Active audience participation (questions, comments, and sharing of lessons-learned) will be encouraged.

Menu:
First Course: Caesar Salad
Entree – Choice of: Tortellini with vodka pink sauce – or – Chicken Marsala served with roasted potatoes and vegetable – or – Tuscan tilapia with peppers, onions, and capers, served with potatoes and vegetable
Dessert: Fruit Bavarian cake