Erik P. Blasch, Ph.D./MBA, is a research engineer focused on information fusion performance evaluation, multi-modal image fusion, multi-domain avionics, space situational awareness, and human-machine integration He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ph.D. in Electrical Eng. from Wright State University in addition to numerous Master's Degrees in Mech. Eng., Ind. Eng., Health Science, Elect. Eng., Economics, Psychology, Medicine, and Military Studies. His affiliations include adjunct associate professor, President of professional societies, member of the International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF) Evaluation of Techniques for Uncertainty Representation Working Group (ETURWG), and member of the IEEE Avionics Systems Technical Panel. He has compiled 16 books, 68 patents, 182+ journal papers, and 500+ peer-reviewed publications. His contributions include: physics-based and human-derived information fusion (PHIF), the data fusion information group (DFIG) model, confusion-matrix data fusion, game-theoretic space situational awareness, evidential reasoning simultaneous tracking and identification (STID) filtering, and the multisource AI scorecard table (MAST). He is the recipient of 21 performance medals, 8 named awards, as well as Fellow of AIAA (astronautics), IEEE (electrical), MSS (sensing), RAeS (aerospace), and SPIE (optical) societies.
Frederica Darema, PhD, is the President and CEO of the InfoSymbiotic Systems Society. Retired (2019) as Senior Executive Service (SES) member and as Director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, in Arlington, Virginia, where she led the entire basic research S&T investments for the AF; also served in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, as Research Director in the Air Force's Chief Data Office, and as Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Air Force Office for Science, Technology and Engineering.
Prior career history includes: Research Staff positions at the University of Pittsburgh, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Schlumberger-Doll; management and executive-level positions at: T.J.Watson IBM Research Center and IBM Corporate Strategy Group; National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Director of the AFOSR Directorate for Information, Math, and Life Sciences.
Dr. Darema received her PhD (University of California at Davis) in Nuclear Physics, and as Fulbright Scholar and Distinguished Scholar. She is IEEE Life Fellow; WAAS Fellow (World Academy of Arts and Sciences), among other distinctions. Made seminal contributions in computational sciences and the supercomputing field (pioneered: the SPMD computational model; and the DDDAS paradigm). She serves on university Advisory Boards and governmental research review panels; and she is co-Editor of the DDDAS Handbooks and Conferences Proceedings.
Alex J. Aved, PhD, is a Senior Researcher with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate, Rome, NY, USA. His research interests include multimedia databases, stream processing (via CPU, GPU, and emerging integrated circuit architectures), and dynamically executing models with feedback loops incorporating measurement and error data to improve the accuracy of the model. He has published over 100 papers and given numerous invited lectures. Previously, he was a programmer at the University of Central Florida and database administrator and programmer at Anderson University.
