Drs. Gralla and Szajnfarber receive NSF grant to study the design of complex engineering systems

Dr. Erica Gralla and Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber, in collaboration with researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology and Purdue, have received a two-year, $245,626 National Science Foundation grant for “EAGER: Collaborative Research: Demonstrating the Importance of Research Setting Representativeness in Systems Engineering and Design Research.”  GW’s portion of the grant is $128,182.  Designing complex engineering systems such as critical infrastructure, capital-intensive projects, and national defense systems involves large design teams consisting of hundreds to thousands of individuals over timescales reaching into decades. This project addresses the methodological question of how to study the design of such complex engineering systems using simpler, shorter-duration, and more controlled research settings. The research objective of this project is to establish and validate a set of standards for research setting representativeness to assess whether and the extent to which findings from one research setting can be extended to others.