Simulation-Based Engineering Science Report Now Available
March 3, 2006
The National Science Foundation commissioned a blue-ribbon panel of experts, chaired by J. Tinsley Oden, to produce a report on Simulation-Based Engineering Science. The final released report is now available at http://www.ices.utexas.edu/events/SBES_Final_Report.pdf.
Other members of the panel included Ted Belytschko, Jacob Fish, Thomas J.R. Hughes, Chris Johnson, David Keyes, Alan Laub, Linda Petzold, David Srolovitz, and Sidney Yip.
The report contains findings and recommendations to advance the discipline of Simulation-Based Engineering Science. The report discusses applications of computational simulation in several different areas, such as medicine, homeland security, the environment, materials, and industrial and defense applications.
Research opportunities are described in areas like multiscale modeling and simulation, verification and validation, uncertainty quantification, and data-driven simulations.
A major recommendation in the report calls for recognizing SBES as a distinct field of research, noting that "computer modeling and simulation are the key elements for achieving progress in engineering and science."
The panel made four major recommendations. The first was that NSF should change its organizational structure to support SBES activities. The second was a call for a major funding increase for SBES: a six-fold funding increase for SBES-related disciplines over the 2005 baseline. The third was a recommendation for a program in high-risk long-term research "to exploit the considerable promise of SBES."
The fourth and final recommendation was a broad call for sweeping changes in the educational system to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of modern engineering research and "to help students acquire the necessary modeling and simulation skills."
