Olivier de Weck is a leader in systems engineering research. He focuses on how complex man-made systems such as aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, printers, and critical infrastructures are designed and how they evolve over time. His main emphasis is on strategic properties that have the potential to maximize lifecycle value. Since 2001 his group has developed novel quantitative methods and tools that explicitly consider manufacturability, flexibility, commonality, and sustainability among other characteristics. Prof. de Weck’s teaching emphasizes excellence, innovation, and bridging of theory and practice.

Prof. de Weck holds degrees in industrial engineering from ETH Zurich and aerospace systems engineering from MIT. Before joining MIT, he was a liaison engineer and later engineering program manager on the F/A-18 aircraft program at McDonnell Douglas.

Dr. Bruce Cameron is the Director of the System Architecture Lab at MIT and a co-founder of Technology Strategy Partners, a consultancy. His research interests include technology strategy, system architecture, and the management of product platforms. Previously, Dr. Cameron ran the MIT Commonality study, a 30-firm investigation of platforming returns, which concluded that firms face systemic downward pressure on commonality, partially resulting from challenges capturing the costs of variety. Dr. Cameron has supervised over 50 graduate students, and has directed research projects for Amazon, BP, Sikorsky, Nokia, Caterpillar, AMGEN, Verizon, and NASA. Dr. Cameron teaches the System Architecture core class for the System Design and Management program, where he has taught over 500 students. Dr. Cameron’s teaching in Sloan Executive Education has been tied for the highest rated Executive Education program at MIT for several years. Additionally, Dr. Cameron is the Faculty Director for MIT’s Architecture and System Engineering online certificate, which has taught over 5,300 participants.

Timothy Simpson is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He holds affiliate appointments in Engineering Design and the College of Information Sciences & Technology. His research interests include product family design and platform-based product development, multidisciplinary design optimization, trade space exploration, and additive manufacturing. He has over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings and he is the lead editor on two books, Product Platform and Product Family Design: Methods & Applications (2005) and Advances in Product Family and Product Platform Design: Methods & Applications (2013). His research has been supported by a variety of federal and state agencies, including NSF, ONR, DARPA, EDA, and DCED, as well as numerous companies, ranging from startups to multi-national corporations. He has worked with over 30 different companies to apply his research methods to improve their product lines and product development practices, and he helped establish and manage the Product Platforms Group on LinkedIn.