The critically acclaimed Ridley Scott film The Martian depicts Matt Damon as botanist/astronaut Mark Watney who is stranded on Mars after he is carried off by a storm during an emergency liftoff sequence. His fellow crew members presume that he is dead, and in the face of the potential loss …

Honeybees are a critical part of our food production chain. They pollinate essential food crops around the world. In the United States alone they account for the annual pollination of crops valued at $15B, or 25% of the U.S. food harvest. Without their services our national food security would be …

Solving complex problems is the main course on the systems engineering menu. No longer reserved as a delicacy to be consumed by a few adventurous diners, complex problems are daily fare for the working engineer. It is the easy-to-solve, simplistic problem that has become rare. This situation has a wide …

The first task in any problem-solving effort is that of framing the problem. This is sometimes simplistically labeled “stating” the problem but that invites a limited view of what is involved up front. What is needed at the beginning is anything but limited. It is hard to overstate the importance …