
FEATURED AUTHOR
Mark Maier
I have long been fascinated not just by the technicalities of building great systems, but by the insight needed to begin. The Art of Systems Architecting addresses the need for “art” or the embrace of subjective or unmeasurable characteristics in otherwise "hard-core" engineering of complex systems.
Biography
My educational background is in traditional engineering. I have a BS in Engineering and Applied Science and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). I have a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC). Most of my early work was in traditional engineering activities, although it began to transition to conceptual development of new systems. While at USC I began work with Dr. Eberhardt Rechtin who founded the Systems Architecture program there. Dr. Rechtin was a founder of the NASA Deep Space Network while at JPL, a Director of DARPA, and Undersecretary of Defense, and the President and CEO the The Aerospace Corporation before taking an appointment at USC. Through this work I recognized my own progression from disciplinary engineer to system architect and the consistent patterns that underlay such a transition. The Art of Systems Architecting is our codification of heuristics and techniques for addressing the least well understood aspects of systems architecting, the “art” part, or the part that must embrace the subjective, the uncertain, and the unmeasurable.Education
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BS, Engineering and Applied Science, Caltech
MS, Electrical Engineering, Caltech
PhD, Electrical Engineering, USC
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Systems engineering and architecting, sensor systems