Thomas F Gannon

Biography

Education: B.S.E.E Illinois Institute of Technology 1970 M.S.E.E Purdue University 1971 Ph.D EE/CS Stevens Institute of Technology 1977 Tom has over 45 years of experience in enterprise systems engineering, real-time control systems and information management systems. Prior to joining the faculty of WPI as a Professor of Practice in 2014, Tom was Director of Information Systems Engineering and Chief Engineer for the Software Engineering Technical Center at the MITRE Corporation, and he continues to serve as the Consulting Chief Engineer for that organization on a part-time basis. Previously, Tom was Director of Information Systems Engineering and Chief Engineer for the Technology and Innovation (T&I) Directorate of the Command and Control Center (C2C) at MITRE, where he was responsible for the formation and management of the Directorate’s technology strategy, investment plans, and science and technology (S&T) programs for an organization of over 1,200 technical staff. He also served as Director of the Corporate Technology Transfer Office and Director of Information Systems Engineering for the Information Technology Directorate of the Center for Air Force Command and Control in previous assignments since joining MITRE in 1999. Tom also held senior management positions in RD&E at Digital Equipment and Bell Laboratories. While at Digital, he was responsible for establishing and guiding the evolution of several national research consortia, including the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC), SEMATECH, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), as well as managing Digital's investments in those consortia. While at Bell Laboratories, Tom was responsible for the development of real-time digital control systems for military applications and the integration of large-scale information systems across the Bell System. Tom has also served as a member of the Technical Advisory Boards and Board of Directors of MCC, MCNC, SEMATECH and SRC, and as a member of the National Academy of Science Committee on International Trends in Computer Science and Technology. While at Digital, he also served as Chairman of the Technology Policy Committee of CSPP, a public policy forum established by the U.S. computer industry, and was responsible for directing the development of public policy positions on strategic technology issues which affected the global competitiveness of the U.S. computer industry. Tom also served as an adjunct member of the faculty at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in both the Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments since 1983, and he served as a senior advisor on a faculty committee at WPI to establish an inter-disciplinary curriculum for both the Masters and Doctoral graduate degree programs in Systems Engineering. He has contributed to the development and delivery of numerous graduate courses for this program in the areas of Systems Thinking, Systems Architecture, Design, Integration, Testing, Validation and Verification. Tom was also recently appointed as Assistant Director for Academic Communications and member of the Academic Matters Leadership Team for the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). He holds a multi-disciplinary Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, as well as an MS from Purdue University and a BS from the Illinois Institute of Technology, both in Electrical Engineering.

Research Interest

Enterprise and system-of-systems modeling and simulation; High-reliability and fault tolerant systems; High-performance system architectures; Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE)