DAHLGREN, Va. –
Cutting-edge technologies. Leading technical experts. Instantaneous question and answer sessions and panel discussions – the fourth annual Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Community of Interest (CoI) Summit is in the books.
Since 2019, the M&S CoI at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) has exceeded expectations with their annual summit. After two years of virtual summits, this year’s event, held at the University of Mary Washington’s (UMW) Dahlgren Campus Aug. 24-25, saw participants in person and online for poster and briefing sessions, panel discussions and question-and-answer opportunities.
“This year’s summit went pretty well,” said John Romano, conference organizer and NSWCDD Hypersonic Design Integration and Analysis Branch head. “We had some bumps in the road with this year’s hybrid environment, but we had a good turnout.”
Dr. Denisse Soto from the Navy M&S Office kicked-off the event with a conversation about M&S and its role across the Navy and greater Department of Defense. During the conference, participants had the opportunity to attend up to eight technical presentations each day from NSWCDD, NSWC Carderock, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport and Marine Corps Systems Command experts. Day one treated attendees to an in person poster session, creating a unique networking opportunity. Individuals from four of the ten departments at NSWCDD showcased their projects’ M&S technological capabilities, including lethality and effectiveness, artificial intelligence and machine learning and model-based systems engineering.
Day two kicked off with a keynote address from Marie Bussiere, the digital transformation executive for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation. Bussiere acts as the chief engineer for a shared digital battlespace program and also works with Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) for their National Institute for STEM Education (NISE) portfolio.
Each of the summit days were broken up by panel discussions, featuring experts from across Dahlgren’s technical departments. The first panel discussion – “Towards Reinventing the Range” – dove into the role that M&S plays in the effort and how M&S technology synthesizes with hardware to ultimately provide reliable data to the warfighter. Experts Rob Ponder, Tim Van Drew and Melissa Smith shared their respective insight.
The next day, Dr. Chris Wilson, Ryan Bosely, Greg Ryan and Mike Hopson discussed internal investments and advancing capabilities at NSWCDD. Programs such as NISE and the In-House Laboratory Independent Research platform support M&S work across the NAVSEA warfare centers to deliver state-of-the-art technologies to the warfighter.
According to Romano, more than 110 people attended the conference in person on Tuesday, with another some 165 people tuning in online. Around 100 attendees made the trip to UMW’s Dahlgren campus on Wednesday, with another 120 online.