The 2009 MODSIM World Conference & Exposition™ was held October 14-16 at the Virginia Beach Convention Center in Hampton Roads. The focus of the third annual international Conference and Expo was on 21st Century Decision-Making: The Art of Modeling & Simulation and featured a wide variety of workshops, exhibits and speakers focusing on the unique multi-disciplinary applications of modeling and simulation.
This year’s conference was kicked off by U.S. Senator Mark Warner who held his Virginia Summit on Modeling and Simulation on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 13.
The conference proper started on Wednesday morning with a keynote address by USC Institute for Creative Technologies Director, Dr. William Swartout. Afterward, the six program tracks, with eight sessions of content each, began: Defense & Homeland Security, Education & Training, Engineering & Science, Health & Medicine, Human Dimension, and Transportation & Logistics. There also was a seventh, cross-cutting track of Serious Gaming which had sessions in each of the six core tracks throughout the conference.
Other keynote speakers for the 2009 conference included Astronaut Dr. Charles Camarda of NASA; Dr. Paul Roman of the Royal Military College of Canada; and Doug Whatley, CEO of BreakAway, Ltd.
This year’s conference also featured a heavy focus on student outreach with nearly 300 students attending on Thursday. The student program featured interaction with local colleges and universities with M&S programs and a serious games kiosk where companies could demonstrate and students could play games developed for training. The kiosk, sponsored by SAIC, featured about a dozen different companies and was the highlight for the students.
From left to right: LTC Gerold Sondej, NATO Allied Command Transformation; Wayne Buck, Modeling & Simulation Specialist at NATO Allied Command Transformation; Mrs Anita Sonjej, freelance journalist. Photo credit CP3.
By all measures the 2009 edition of the conference was great success with over 1000 attendees, a 30% increase over 2008. Download the 2009 Conference Brochure with Abstracts.
The fourth annual MODSIM World Conference & Expo will be held on October 13-15, 2010. For more information, contact the Hampton Roads Partnership’s M&S Program Manager.