Responding to continuous global change in systems needs will be covered during the 2011 Complex Adaptive Systems Conference to be held Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in Chicago. Responding to continuous global change in systems needs will be covered during the 2011 Complex Adaptive Systems Conference to be held Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in Chicago.

Haden Land, vice president and chief technology officer for Lockheed Martin, is among the plenary speakers. Land will discuss the pace of change across the IT landscape that is occurring at a rate unseen before in history. He will look at challenges, opportunities and possible strategies for the future. Land will also talk about ways industry and academia can partner to address challenges to the nation’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

The annual conference, which serves researchers from many different countries, is led by conference chair Dr. Cihan H. Dagli, a professor of engineering management and systems engineering and director of the Smart Engineering Systems Laboratory at Missouri S&T.

The program’s six plenary sessions include presentations on complex systems, energy and environmental sustainability, complex sensor data analysis, modern and biologically inspired paradigm, computational intelligence and machine learning, and sensor networks and distributed computation.

Sponsors for the conference include Lockheed Martin, Tata Consultancy Services, RIMES and Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

“We are living in an integrated global society. This is true for defense, commercial, political, education and enterprise. Global society will depend on complex, distributed engineering systems that can adapt to dynamically changing needs of the society,” says Land. “Lockheed Martin is leveraging the world of academia and shaping STEM programs now, to ensure that the future workforces are well prepared for this ever-evolving environment.”

More information about the conference is available online at http://complexsystems.mst.edu/.