
Dennis Buede
Committee MemberDr. Buede has over twenty-five years of experience in both the theoretical development and engineering application of decision support technologies. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the Engineering-Economic Systems Department of Stanford University and his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He is currently President of Innovative Decisions, Inc., which conducts decision and risk analyses. He has been a Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at Stevens Institute of Technology and Professor at George Mason University. Prior to that he ran his own consulting and research company for eight years. He has done extensive research in the fields of decision analysis, data fusion and systems engineering. In particular, he has pioneered in the development of new decision methodologies in the areas of system design and evaluation, and resource allocation. He has authored The Engineering Design of Systems: Methods and Models, coauthored a book titled Decision Synthesis, and authored or coauthored numerous professional and technical papers in the above fields. He belongs to the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, and the International Council on Systems Engineering. He is a Fellow of INCOSE.

Steven Dam
Committee MemberDr. Steven H. Dam is the President and Founder of Systems and Proposal Engineering Company (SPEC Innovations). Dr. Dam has a BS degree in Physics from George Mason University and a PhD. in Physics from the University of South Carolina. He has been involved with structure analysis, software development, and systems engineering for over 30 years. He participated in the development of C4ISR Architecture Framework and DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF), the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO) Vision Architecture, the Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), and Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) architecture. He has also been a long term member of INCOSE and was a Past-President of the San Diego Chapter before relocating to the Washington Metropolitan Area. Dr. Dam has presented numerous papers and seminars to the WMA Chapter. He is currently a Past-President and Programs Chair of the WMA Chapter of INCOSE.

Gerard Fisher
Committee MemberMr. Fisher has 47 years’ experience in development of complex military systems. He has strong analytic and management capability and has filled key engineering roles as Chief Engineer, Project Manager, Systems Engineering Manager, Technical Marketing, Quality Program Manager, hardware, software and diagnostic development, test & integration, and proposal team. His domain experiences include: ballistic missile defense, air-defense missiles, sonar signal processing systems, and satellite surveillance systems. He has also provided consulting services on process improvement, metrics, Year 2000 assessment, multi-criteria decision analysis using the Analytic Hierarchy Process and provided applied systems engineering training using object-oriented model-based systems engineering tools. Mr. Fisher keeps current in systems engineering trends and practices through his active involvement in the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), where he serves on the Certification Advisory Group, which sets policy for and administers the INCOSE Certification program.. Mr. Fisher is certified as an INCOSE Expert Systems Engineering Professional (ESEP) and an INCOSE Fellow. Mr. Fisher serves on the Advisory Board of the George Mason University Systems Engineering & Operations Research Department.

Ed Gabb
Committee MemberEd Gabb is a Systems Engineer for Lockheed Martin. He received BS Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985. He has been a member of INCOSE since 2009. He has previously worked for IBM, Loral, Orbital Sciences and Aether Systems. Along with being a systems engineer he has been a software developer, system tester, trainer, network performance modeler, lab manager, project engineer, and line manager. Over the past 27 years he has worked in the areas of satellite command and control, logistics, air traffic control, wireless networking, aircraft mission planning, and advanced radars.

Kristin Giammarco
Committee MemberKristin Giammarco is an Associate Professor of Systems Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at the Stevens Institute of Technology. She completed her doctoral research in the area of formal methods for architecture model-based assessment, and in particular, distilled essential conceptual data model elements and relationships that support interoperability assessment. She holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from NPS, a Master’s in Systems Engineering Management from NPS, and a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology. She continues to research formal architecture model and design assessment methods and criteria.

Chien-Chung(Edward) Huang
Committee MemberDr. Edward Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research, and is associated with System Architectures Laboratory, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. He received his B.S. degree in industrial engineering and engineering management from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan in 2001, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial systems engineering from George Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia in 2008 and 2011, respectively.
Prior to joining George Mason, he worked as a senior system engineer at Innovative Scheduling. Dr. Huang’s research interests include model-based systems engineering, UML/SysML system modeling, model verification and transformation. He is the member of International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Kathryn Laskey
Committee MemberKathryn Laskey earned a joint PhD in Statistics and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. After completing her PhD, she worked for Decision Science Consortium, a Virginia small business specializing in decision analysis, decision support systems, and research on human judgment and decision-making. She moved to George Mason University in 1990, where she teaches in the Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) department and performs research on computational probability and decision theory, with a special focus on semantic interoperability in domains characterized by uncertainty. She is Associate Director of the Center of Excellence in Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C4I Center), and is the faculty advisor of GMU INCOSE, the student chapter of INCOSE. She is a regular attendee of INCOSE WMA chapter meetings, and is the INCOSE Ambassador to the SEOR Department at George Mason University.

Jerry Sellers
Committee MemberDr. Jerry Jon Sellers, is author of Understanding Space: An Introduction to Astronautics, and is a contributing author and editor of Applied Space Systems Engineering. He was the director of the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Space Systems Research Center. He has over 25 years of space systems experience including Guidance & On-board Navigation Officer in Space Shuttle Mission Control; Assistant Professor of Astronautics at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Astronautics for the Air Force European Office of Aerospace Research & Development. He is an Associate Fellow at AIAA and the former Chairman of the Space Systems Technical Committee. He is also an adjunct professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. He is currently a principle partner with Teaching Science & Technology Inc.

Warren Vaneman
ChairmanWarren Vaneman is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Systems Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has more than 20 years of systems engineering experience in various government agencies, including serving as a chief architect within the intelligence community. His research interests include System of Systems Engineering and Integration, and Model-based Systems Engineering. Warren received his Ph.D. in Industrial and System Engineering, and M.S. in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech, and his B.S. from the State University of New York Maritime College. In a parallel career, Warren is a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve, where he is a surface warfare officer and a senior member of the Navy Space Cadre. He has participated in several campaigns and operations including, Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Burnt Frost.

Stephen Zini
Committee MemberStephen Zini is an INCOSE certified Systems Engineering Professional with space systems focus and experience with remote Sensing/ISR systems engineering, architectures, requirements and CONOPs development, Modeling & Simulation, software testing and transition. Mr. Zini is a retired Navy Captain with an MS in Space Systems Operations and a BS in Aerospace Engr.