Cliff Whitcomb's principal fields of interest are systems engineering; multiple criteria decision making applied to complex engineered systems; innovative product development; and US Naval surface-combatant and submarine design. In the area of product development, he is studying the application of technologies from diverse disciplines to produce innovative products. Processes have been defined to allow new product development with simultaneous consideration of technical optimization, company business goals and customer preferences for the product concept. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).

He is currently the Director of the Systems Engineering Program (SEP) within the Systems Design and Management Program (SDM). The SEP purpose is to build an organizational core competency in systems engineering for SDM partner companies. The SEP is in it's second year as a pilot program, with United Technologies Corporation (UTC) as the corporate partner. The three elements of the SEP are the SDM masters degree, a one year graduate-level Certficate of Systems Engineering, and a series of workshops for Managers and Supervisors.

Dr. Whitcomb was previously a research scientist in the MIT Sea Grant Program, and an Associate Professor of Naval Construction and Engineering within the Course XIII-A Program in the Ocean Engineering Department at MIT, a position sponsored by the Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC. In his role for this graduate degree program he offered students a comprehensive education in naval engineering that emphasized their future roles as advocates for innovation in ship design and acquisition. He assumed that academic position within the Department of Ocean Engineering in 1998 following a three-year tour of duty as Program Officer, Ship Structures and Systems Science and Technology Division, Office of Naval Research (ONR), Arlington, VA. During that assignment, he was the Program Manager for the Surface Ship and Submarine Machinery and Electrical Systems Applied Research Program (6.2) being conducted at US Navy labs and by industrial contractors. He was also Program Officer for the Electrical Engineering Basic Research Program (6.1) that involved the award, review and management of research grants at US universities. From June 1992 until September 1995, he was a ship design research engineer at Carderock Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (CDNSWC) in Carderock, Maryland. In that assignment, he led teams in activities such as the development of an integrated computational design environment for complex systems, including ships and submarines. This assignment involved several projects including being the team leader for an Innovation Center project studying 25 corporations and government agencies to determine how computational design is implemented for complex systems across distributed organizations; leading a cost and operational effectiveness analysis for submarine fuel-cell power plants; and a special study of submarine propeller cavitation.

Education
PhD (ME), University of Maryland, 1998
Naval Engineer, MIT, 1992
SM (EE&CS), MIT, 1992
BSE (NuclearE), University of Washington, 1984

Memberships
International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE)

American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE)
Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME)
Sigma Xi

Selected Publications
“A Prescriptive Production-Distribution Approach for Decision Making in New Product Design” (with S. Azarm and N. Palli), IEEE Journal of Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Vol. 29, No. 3, August 1999.
“Naval Ship Design Philosophy Implementation,” Naval Engineers Journal, May 1998.
“Asymmetric Impacts of Evolving SSK Technologies on Future Naval Deployments” (with G. McHugh), Warship ’99, International Symposium on Naval Submarines, Royal Institute of Naval Architects, London, England, UK, June 1999.
“A Decision Support Framework for Multidisciplinary Product Design” (with S. Azarm and S. Narayanan), 7th AIAA MDO Conference, St. Louis, MO, September 1998.
Complete List of Publications

Selected Student Theses
Improved Selection of Technically Attractive Projects Using Knowledge Management and Net Interactive Tools, Michael Frauens, SM (SDM), 1/00.
Applied Information Technology (IT) for Ship Design, Production and Lifecycle Support: A Total Systems Approach, Gary Dunlap, SM (NAME) and SM (OSM), 6/99.
Complete List of Theses Supervised

Contact Information
Building: E40-357
Phone: (617) 253-9668
Fax: (617) 258-5229
e-mail: whitcomb@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/whitcomb/www