I had a fantastic time hosting the fourth Mastering Complexity (MasCot) Program Day on October 9 at TU Delft. MasCot, a €3M academic program co-funded by TNO-ESI and NWO, addresses the pressing need for new advanced engineering methodologies through four projects covering essential topics, such as design space exploration during early system design, scheduling, verification, and restructuring of evolving software.
The day started with an update from the four academic projects in the program, focusing on updates and new results from the last year. It was interesting to hear a mix of positive results, e.g. new scheduling methods that outperform previous approaches, as well as negative results, a counter-example that demonstrated that further attempts at proving a particular theory were not worthwhile.
In the afternoon, TNO-ESI and industry partners from the projects shared their user stories, in which they reflected on the value of the program and the knowledge and proof-of-concept implementations developed in it. The user stories were positive and included examples of planned and ongoing technology transfer from the projects.
There were also breakout sessions where TNO-ESI, academic staff, industry representatives, and PhD students separately discussed what went well during the organization and execution of the program, and what should be done differently in the future. This feedback will be consolidated in a document describing the lessons learned from the MasCot Program, which will be used as a basis to refining the method for academic collaborations at TNO-ESI. It was clear from the feedback from all groups that everyone appreciated the program and how TNO-ESI brought academia and industry together to solve relevant problems. A main challenge for the future is to better align stakeholders from industry and academia and their different goals, environments, and timelines.
The day program was concluded with an interactive session, structured around our PMCs, where participants worked together to identify interesting research challenges and hot research topics for future academic collaborations. What stood out in terms of challenges was a clear need to address testing and integration challenges, also in the context of microservices. When looking at hot research topics and technological opportunities … you guessed it … safe, explainable, responsible, … , AI for Systems Engineering!
The day concluded with a social program at Stadsbrouwerij De Koperen Kat with a short tour given by the owner and a BBQ buffet with beer tasting. That concluded the fourth, and last MasCot Program Day.
