SYSEN 6100: Ezra Roundtable Systems Seminar Series

This seminar series emphasizes the systems approach to meeting the grand challenges that civilization is facing in areas such as infrastructure, transportation, energy, environmental quality, food, health care, and international peace. Faculty and students from a wide range of disciplines, including engineering, economics, business, law, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, participate. The seminar is scheduled on Fridays from 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m., followed by a lunch with faculty members interested in the speaker’s work.
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CEE4650/6650: Transportation Systems and Air Quality Planning and Modeling

How has our society’s love affair with the private car shaped the environment in which we live? How are new policies and laws affecting our transportation options and the world environment in general? How are other countries responding to market changes and the environmental impacts of transportation? How far is each individual from issues such as the new energy bill, fuel cells, hybrid electrical vehicles, hydrogen economy, and climate change? This course exposes students to these questions by focusing on the nexus of transportation and air quality, energy, and climate change concerns. It is interdisciplinary, drawing upon transportation, air quality, statistics, market research, and policy.

Course Objectives

  • Understand the many forces and events that shape auto-centric transportation systems, and explore investments and policies that would enhance the transportation system—in terms of performance, productivity, access, energy use, safety, and environmental impacts—in an equitable fashion.

  • Examine the impact of transportation on air quality; review mobile source regulatory framework and internal combustion engine gas/particle emissions; gain quantitative understanding of emissions testing methodologies, ozone formation mechanisms, weekend/weekday emissions issues, driver behavior and emissions, and laboratory vs. real-world emissions levels.

  • Gain critical understanding of the theory, structure, functioning, and application of the major air quality models currently used for emissions estimation; understand the individual model components for the major models currently in use. (This includes their underlying principles, assumptions, policy and application implications, data requirements, and advantages and disadvantages.)

  • Promote technology, regulation/policy, management, and financing innovations in environment, energy, and transportation systems; obtain active learning and independent research training and skills to implement the innovative ideas; writing (topic, key ideas, major problems/issues to address, tasks, methodology/approach).

SYSEN 5300: Systems Engineering and Six Sigma for the Design and Operation of Reliable Systems

The purpose of this course is to develop fundamental concepts, analytical skills, and practical tools in the design, operation, and control of reliable systems, including Green Belt and Black Belt Six Sigma training, across a variety of types of systems. The course contents are designed to include the complete spectrum of knowledge (with appropriate depth into key elements) necessary for participants to become active leaders in systems reliability analysis/management and a Six Sigma initiative. Green Belt and Black Belt certificates will be signed by the Cornell Systems Engineering Program Director to course participants satisfying specific course project and grade requirements.

Key Themes

  • First, we will focus on risk analysis with a particular emphasis on risk assessment and risk characterization. The key modeling tools we will study are how to conduct Failure Modes and Effects Analyses, including the development of fault trees and event trees under uncertainty.

  • The second theme we will focus on is modeling component and system reliability, including the use of physical acceleration models. Reliability is the ability of a system or component to perform its required function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Reliability analysis is an element of risk analysis. In general, risk analysis is substantially broader, including explicit treatment of the consequences of different types of failures.

  • The third theme we will focus on is Six Sigma and statistical process control for quality control and improvement. A key process in the operation of reliable systems is the development and effective use of mechanisms to detect when performance is deteriorating so that corrective action can be taken.

  • Fourth, we will focus on the improvement and optimization of system design for reliability. This will lead us to study the design of experiments and the estimation of response surfaces that can greatly catalyze innovation, problem solving, and discovery.

 

SYSEN 5400/6400: Theory and Practice of Systems Architecture

Systems Architecture is the study of the process by which we define the conceptual and high-level design of a system, called the architecture of the system. Architectural decisions are the first and most important design decisions of a system. They are made at the beginning of the systems engineering process, when the uncertainty and ambiguity on the system and its context are maximal. The goal of the Systems Architecture process is to select an architecture that ensures the system’s ability to satisfy stakeholders’ needs and goals sustainably over the system’s lifecycle. The concepts and skills needed to do system architecture are a mix of quantitative and qualitative tools, methods, and principles that span different disciplines, including graph theory, decision theory, optimization, statistics, and computer science, as well as a large body of domain-specific expertise about the system at hand. The goal of this course is to provide students with a set of tools, methods, concepts, mental models, and principles that will help them conduct system architecture studies more effectively, while giving them exposure to a number of real system architecture problems from a variety of industries. The course has a theoretical component but emphasizes practical applications of the theory. (This course was initially developed by Professor Dani Selva.)