Luminary Presentations
The Luminary session is tagged as a keystone event for the 2014 PHM Conference. In this session, experts from different domains provide new insights on the pervasive use of health management methods and technologies. In 2014, the luminary session will take place on Tuesday, September 30 morning. These sessions are intended not only to highlight the inter-disciplinary aspect of health management, but also promote an interchange of ideas that span diverse application domains.
| Tuesday, September 30, 2013 |
8:30am – 11:30am |
| 8:30AM–8:35AM |
Session Introduction |
| 8:35AM–9:05AM |
Dr. Nancy Leveson
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Design for Safety
Abstract: The model of causality used in engineering goes back to the mid-1800s and treats causality as a set of directly related events chained together over time. This model of causality underlies most all the engineering safety (and reliability) techniques used today. Unfortunately, it no longer applies to the complex, software-intensive, sociotechnical systems we are building : the cause of the accidents we are seeing increasingly today are different than those in the past and are rooted in the unique nature of software, new types of human error arising from the new roles humans are playing in systems, and increasing complexity. Prof. Leveson will describe a revolutionary new model of accident causation based on systems theory rather than reliability theory. Using this new model as a foundation, much more powerful engineering tools can be created.
Speaker Bio: Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Prof. Leveson conducts research on the topics of system safety, software safety, software and system engineering, and human-computer interaction. In 1999, she received the ACM Allen Newell Award for outstanding computer science research and in 1995 the AIAA Information Systems Award for “developing the field of software safety and for promoting responsible software and system engineering practices where life and property are at stake.” In 2005 she received the ACM Sigsoft Outstanding Research Award. She has published over 200 research papers and is author of two books, “Safeware: System Safety and Computers” published in 1995 by Addison-Wesley and “Engineering a Safer World” published in 2012 by MIT Press. She consults extensively in many industries on the ways to prevent accidents. |
| 9:05AM–9:10AM |
Speaker Introduction |
| 9:10AM–9:40AM |
Dr. Mark Boslough
Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories |
Better Predictions Through Betting: Designing Custom Futures Markets to Turn Data into Decisions
Abstract: Decision makers and analysts are often overwhelmed with large data sets and lack of tools that help them navigate and make informed decisions. Making decisions in changing complex environments requires trusted and validated knowledge originating from individuals with expertise and experience. One innovation uses collective intelligence to aggregate and distill this knowledge, enabling informed and well-documented decisions with a prediction market that yields a dynamic probability “ticker” and time-resolved knowledge map to enable decision making. A market in this context is a weighted trading system whereby individuals exchange knowledge without overwhelming one another.
In principal, prediction markets can be customized to exploit collective intelligence to quickly translate dispersed information into actionable knowledge by continuously aggregating trusted information from a wide range of resources, reducing the amount of time to gather data and make operational decisions. Customized prediction markets can generate probabilities about future events, and their effectiveness is determined by a contributor’s willingness to invest in a hypothesis, provide knowledge to support it, and the market response to the shared knowledge. The success of such prediction markets requires a reward for information exchange that is directly related to the relevance and value of the information.
A successful custom market would present high-level dynamic graphic information to decision makers, and also the ability to rapidly drill down to data. The ticker represents an outcome probability that changes with time due to changing information and opinions of a vast community of subject matter experts whose reputations are on the line.
One proposed innovation is a disclosure rule that requires participants to attach an explanation for every trade that the decision maker can opt to see. This can be implemented as a pointer in the buy or sell order. There are many possible variations on the proposed disclosure rule. For example, a rule that keeps the disclosed information hidden until the trade is executed provides a direct measure of the value of the information by linking it to the subsequent change in market value, (which translates directly to the consensus probability estimate). It also generates a reward for sharing the information that is proportional to this value, and a mechanism for citing old information in light of new information.
Possible applications range from finding the best technology to discover land mines, to determining the optimal carbon tax rate for mitigation of global warming.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Mark Boslough is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. He is also an adjunct professor in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at the University of New Mexico. He received his BS in physics from Colorado State University in 1977, and his MS and PhD in applied physics from Caltech in 1978 and 1983, respectively. His graduate research in experimental impact physics was carried out under the guidance of Prof. Tom Ahrens. At Sandia, Boslough has worked on many national security problems including nuclear forensics, climate change, and planetary defense. In 1994 he was a member of a team that used a supercomputer to correctly predict the effects of the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter. He was a member of the mitigation panel that coauthored the 2010 NRC report “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies”.
Mark’s research has been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American, Time Magazine, the New York Times, and many other magazines and newspapers. He has participated in dozens of television documentaries, including an award-winning episode of NOVA about the Younger Dryas climate event at the end of the last ice age. Mark was among the first western scientists to arrive in Chelyabinsk, Russia, after the half-megaton asteroid airburst in 2013, where he did field research and accompanied a production crew filming Meteor Strike for NOVA. He frequently lectures and publishes opinion pieces on the subject of planetary defense and anthropogenic global warming, and is an outspoken critic of unwarranted denial. His TEDxABQ presentation “Mankind can bet on global warming – and win” can be viewed on Youtube. His honors include Distinguished Alumnus (Colorado State University) and Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Asteroid 2003 MB1 “73520 Boslough” was named for him. |
| 9:40AM–10:00AM |
Networking Break |
| 10:00AM–10:05AM |
Speaker Introduction |
| 10:05AM–10:35AM |
Dr. Jeffrey Word
Vice President of Product Strategy, SAP SE |
Emerging Opportunities for Real-Time Computing in Data-Intensive Disciplines
Abstract: In this presentation, Dr. Word will discuss the disruptive innovation of in-memory databases and present a review of the architectural implications of running massive real-time applications and peta-scale data warehouses completely in-memory. Groundbreaking live use-cases from genomics and emerging native in-memory scenarios will be discussed from both a technical and research value perspective. This presentation will explore how this breakthrough innovation from SAP empowers researchers to power their most complex algorithms and instantly analyze and predict on petabyte scale.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Word is a Vice President of Product Strategy at SAP SE, the world’s leading business applications & technology provider. He is responsible for creating and communicating thought leadership on SAP’s In-Memory database strategy globally. Over the last 15 years at SAP, he has driven multiple topics in technology strategy and corporate innovation projects. He is also the world’s best-selling author for SAP-related books. Dr. Word earned his PhD in Information Systems & Strategy at the University of Manchester in England. His research focus is on event-driven process design and next-generation enterprise architecture. He also earned an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a BA in European Studies/Spanish from the University of Oklahoma. |
| 10:35AM–10:40AM |
Panel Introduction |
| 10:40AM–11:30AM |
Luminary Panel Discussion and Q&A |
Luminaries Chairs:
Andy Hess
Karl Reichard
Ian K Jennions
General Chairs:
David He
Carl Byington
email: chair@phmconference.org
