This award will provide support to conduct a three-day workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on November 20-22, 2014. The MIT-based intellectual home of the workshop will be the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center in the School of Engineering. Sixty researchers from around the country in fields such as systems engineering, computer science, and cognitive engineering/human factors will participate. Technology-based innovations in service systems could have enormous economic importance for the U.S. Service systems contribute to 75% of the U.S. GDP and provide close to 80% of employment. Innovative services involving smart technologies have the potential to become the conduit for social innovations addressing major societal problems. To achieve this goal, they are to be designed with the human user or beneficiary in mind. Engineering the systems of the future will require interdisciplinary work involving disciplines that understand human factors (such as cognitive engineering and behavioral science) together with those that understand the technology and appropriate engineering design (such as computer science and systems engineering).
Already, NSF is contributing to the realization of this vision through its initial investments in translational research by the 2014 PFI:BIC program solicitation (NSF 13-587) focused for the first time on the integration of smart technologies into service systems requiring a human factors engineering component. However, to accelerate innovation in smart service systems with major societal impact, it is essential that investments be made not only in the technologies that can enable smarter systems, but also in understanding the behavior of the socio-technical systems and how different design alternatives can generate different system behaviors. This is clearly an interdisciplinary fundamental research challenge that involves several disciplines to generate knowledge at the intersection of those fields.
The Workshop will convene experts from multiple scientific fields in academe, industry, and government: 1) To provide a venue for potential PFI:BIC proposers as well as for current PFI:BIC awardees to exchange ideas and interact with industry representatives in the interest of enhancing success in the program. Invited industry representatives will bring their service innovation research challenges to the table and will present the types of research problems that lend themselves to academe-industry partnerships in smart service systems. (2) To present the state of the art in the fields related to service science and modeling/designing complex service systems, thus providing context for the identification of fundamental research problems that will cross disciplinary boundaries. This is the starting point for identifying the gaps that need to be filled in order to advance the frontier. (3) To elicit fundamental research challenges (basic understanding and modeling) that need to be addressed to enable human-centered and technology-based smart service systems; and engineering and computer science research challenges that need to be addressed to advance technologies with potential for broader societal impact in the context of social innovation based on service systems. (4) To develop a vision and a well-defined fundamental research agenda that includes research goals, research objectives, and a research plan for service systems. The research plan should delineate roles for the different disciplines and a clear motivation to work together; including engineers, cognitive or behavioral scientists and computer scientists.
Several scientists from underrepresented groups will be invited to the workshop, and students at MIT will have an opportunity to present their research work on service systems topics.
