ATLAS Transdisciplinary International Training Activities

Racing to Build the Skills Necessary to Adapt in a Rapidly Changing World

Transdisciplinary (TD) learning and training is the investigation of a pertinent idea, matter, or challenge that combines the viewpoints of several disciplines to establish a link between new understanding and comprehension and practical applications. Transdisciplinary training is unique in that it aims to produce engineers and scientists who combine the methodological and theoretical views of several fields. Because of this, transdisciplinary researchers are more equipped to handle the complexity of today's wicked problems. Transdisciplinary approaches are becoming more and more necessary in many domains, including medicine, the biosciences, and cognitive science. To tackle the multifaceted and intricate issues that modern society faces, new approaches must be supplemented to education and research.

The rapid technological change and convergence in the globally competitive economy are causing current and future upheaval in job markets. A paradigm shift in engineering education is required in response to these job market uncertainties to mitigate unemployment and prepare engineers to tackle problems requiring a convergence of disciplines. Individuals may have to change career paths more than one time in their lifetime. However, a fast transition is not practically possible. To be competitive in professional life, engineers will need to have a novel set of skills and talent centered around creativity, innovation, and system integration. We envision integrating generic skills and knowledge to shape human-technology partnerships, improve professional performance, increase career longevity and job satisfaction, and facilitate life-long knowledge and skills acquisition for the convergent future. Serving Students Around the World As a leading transdisciplinary (TD) non-profit organization, ATLAS offers online TD skills and tools training on designing complex systems. TD training program can step up your professional development, help you stay current in today’s competitive marketplace, and advance your career. TD training program supports you during your professional career and helps you to apply TD new knowledge through critical thinking and problem solving.

“The DoD defines digital engineering as an integrated digital approach that uses authoritative sources of system data and models as a continuum across disciplines to support lifecycle activities from concept through disposal.’’

A digital twin (DTW) is virtual representation of a physical system or process that can be used to mimic its behavior and gain a better understanding of how it functions in real life. It is updated dynamically through the use of cognitive services (data analytics, AI, and machine learning) to optimize the system/process's performance and collect real-time Internet of Things (IoT) data via sensor technology about the physical system/process (see Figure 2.1). Digital twins were successfully used by NASA, one of the first organizations to simulate space missions from the ground up (Ertas and Gulbulak, 2024).

In summary, the digital twin makes it possible to analyze data quickly and monitor systems and processes in real time. This enables early insights into system behavior and the capacity to reason and decide how best to operate the system (i.e., anticipating issues before they emerge). Real-world physical systems and devices that leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technologies—such as sensors—provide the input needed to develop DTW. Digital Twin is able to collect information from Internet of Things sensors and conduct iterative experiments in order to evaluate various operating strategies and understand system behavior (Ertas and Gulbulak, 2024).

This course will offer an understanding of the digital engineering and overview of a model based system design shown in Figure 2.1.