Executive Committee Biography

Bernard P. Zeigler (PI) is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona, Tucson and Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Modeling and Simulation. Receiving awards for his books and articles in the foundations of simulation, he was named Fellow of the IEEE for his theory of discrete event simulation based on the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism in 1995. In 2000 he received the McLeod Founder’s Award by the Society for Computer Simulation, its highest recognition, for his contributions to discrete event simulation. In June 2002, he was elected President of the Society.

From 1993 to 1996, he headed a multidisciplinary team to demonstrate an innovative approach, based on DEVS, to massively parallel simulation supported by NSF's HPCC Grand Challenge initiative. He was also sponsored by Rome Labs to research the use of such high performance simulation technology in support of optimization and model abstraction. He was the PI on a DARPA Advanced Simulation Technology Thrust project to develop the DEVS framework for the DOD High Level Architecture (HLA) distributed simulation standard and its application to message reduction through predictive filtering. This research received Honorable Mention in the 1999 DMSO (US Defense Modeling and Simulation Organization) Awards – the only university-based work to be so recognized. A book on the modeling and simulation, organized by the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, has adopted the framework originated in his classic text, "Theory of Modeling and Simulation," which itself has been revised for a second edition and was published by Academic Press in Jan. 2000.

Zeigler served on two National Research Council committees to recommend directions for information technology and simulation modeling in the 21st Century. He has been appointed to a third NRC committee on simulation enhancements to manufacturing. Serving from 1996 to 2000 as editor-in-chief of the Transactions of the Society for Computer Simulation and from 2000 to 2002 as Vice President in charge of Publications (web and print). He has given numerous keynote talks, tutorials and short courses, and organized symposia and conferences that were the first to promote modeling and simulation fundamentals and theory.

Recently, with other faculty, he founded the Arizona Center for Integrative Modeling and Simulation dedicated to the development of modeling and simulation as a discipline in the future.

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