Collaborative Research: Workshop: The Future of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization - Advancing the Design of Complex Systems, Fort Worth, Texas, September 16, 2010

This grant provides funding to organize and conduct a one-day workshop to explore the future of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and its ability to advance the design of complex systems. The objectives of the workshop are to: (1) identify and document promising future directions for MDO and related research, (2) articulate successful industrial implementations of MDO and identify the challenges with practical implementation of MDO methods and tools, (3) explore relationships between ongoing complex systems design initiatives and MDO, and (4) define affinity groups and target specific proposal solicitations and research opportunities. The workshop will engage 50 people from academia, industry, and government agencies by inviting participants from a wide range of engineering and design communities based on the Steering Committee?s extensive network of contacts. The results of the workshop will be documented in a report that will be distributed through a website and an email list-serve that is maintained by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics? MDO Technical Committee.

If successful, the workshop will identify future research directions in MDO and new synergies with related engineering disciplines and complex systems design initiatives. While many of MDO?s founders are still active and engaged in the community, the focus of MDO has shifted dramatically in the past decade as new faculty and researchers are finding novel ways to use and deploy MDO methods and tools to a wide array of problems. MDO is thus at a cross-roads, and this workshop will help ensure that its future remains bright. Meanwhile, understanding the barriers to its implementation in industry will enable future advancements and allow MDO to realize its full potential. MDO methods and tools will also have much broader impact if a wider audience is engaged in the research. Thus, researchers and engineers outside of the MDO community (e.g., complex systems, systems engineering) will be invited to the workshop to help identify strategies for reaching broader audiences through synergistic efforts. The long-term goal of the workshop is to help reposition MDO as a practical tool for the design of complex engineered systems that can help overcome the cost overruns, schedule delays, and ensuing problems that currently plague many design and development programs.