A doctoral candidate at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has won the Dr. Barry Boehm Award for Doctoral Student Research Excellence in Washington D.C. in recognition of her presentation detailing the critical role of technical measures in complex systems design. Casey Eaton, also a UAH alumna, received the award from the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC). Her work focused on applying technical measures to the development of a NASA Human Landing System (HLS), such as those proposed by the Space X Starship, Blue Origin Blue Moon and Dynetics Autonomous Logistics Platform for All-Moon Cargo Access (ALPACA) lander projects.
The Boehm Award honors the best research presentation delivered by a doctoral student on the basis of potential impact, advancement to systems engineering, originality, technical content and clarity of presentation.
Eaton is a Ph.D. student of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (ISEEM) at UAH, a part of The University of Alabama System. Her research entails formalizing the selection and impacts of measures on decision making in both novel and traditional systems engineering frameworks. She is advised by Dr. Bryan Mesmer, an associate professor of ISEEM.
“I have been working with NASA through the Alabama Space Grant Consortium,” the alumna explains. “The NASA Human Landing System is an interesting case study since they had multiple bids and two awards to date. My research looks at several bid systems, from SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics, to assess what system different frameworks would indicate you should select according to a set of measures.”
NASA has selected a Blue Origin-led team, Dynetics and SpaceX's Starship to develop new moon landers for astronauts for the agency's Artemis lunar program.
Courtesy NASA
Technical measurement sets are a collection of activities that provide information about the progress of a technical solution. They are used to assess risks and issues and to determine the likelihood of meeting project objectives. Measurement sets can help engineers make better decisions and provide frameworks for guidelines used to design, analyze and manage complex systems throughout their entire life cycle.
“Large, complex systems can often be difficult to assess without measures,” Eaton explains. “Measures provide consistent indications of the status of a system design, and they can be compared among different systems for contract awards, for example.”
Eaton’s presentation utilized technical measures to assess lander systems with respect to parameters such as mass, distance and cost, for example, while analyzing the basis for decision making, providing justification for those decisions and employing different types of measures, depending on the desired purpose.
“We explore how missing measures in the set you are using can impact which system might be awarded a contract through different design frameworks,” the researcher notes. “Several systems violated NASA's listed thresholds for the measures, but depending on the design framework, those violations can be overcome by ‘good’ values for other measures.
“If you are missing technical measures, does it actually matter in real-world situations?” Eaton asked in concluding her presentation. “Incomplete technical measure sets can theoretically impact design decisions. We cannot assume technical measure sets are ‘complete’ or ‘correct.’ Technical measures should be selected early and be relevant to the system.”
The Systems Engineering Research Center is a University Affiliated Research Center of the Department of Defense that seeks to leverage the research and expertise of faculty, researchers and students from more than 20 collaborating universities throughout the United States. Each year, SERC seeks submissions from a diverse pool of doctoral students conducting relevant systems engineering-related research at a SERC collaborating university.