One of the characteristics of being human is to model. In our history, we began with representations of animals made from natural materials, and painted on cave walls. We also made regular marks on animal bones. While the modern accounting of these products is art (animal representations) and mathematics (bone marks), a more comprehensive understanding points to modelling in both cases. We saw or imagined things, and then we made models of our experience.
This talk will be a non-technical, cross-disciplinary, introduction to modelling. I will discuss (1) the history of modelling, (2) a way of thinking about modelling using three broad categories, (3) the notion that computer and information science is a form of modelling, and (4) approaches to modelling across disciplines – from art and humanities to business, science, and engineering.
Paul Fishwick is Distinguished University Chair of Arts and Technology (ATEC), and Professor of Computer Science. He has six years of industry experience as a systems analyst working at Newport News Shipbuilding and at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. He was on the faculty at the University of Florida from 1986 to 2012, and was Director of the Digital Arts and Sciences Programs. His PhD was in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Fishwick is active in modelling and simulation, as well as in the bridge areas spanning art, science, and engineering. He pioneered the area of aesthetic computing, resulting in an MIT Press edited volume in 2006.
He is a Fellow of the Society for Computer Simulation, served as General Chair of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), was a WSC Titan Speaker in 2009, and has delivered over 24 keynote addresses at international conferences. He was Chair of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group in Simulation (SIGSIM) four years from 2012 to 2016. Fishwick has over 230 technical publications and has served on all major archival journal editorial boards related to simulation, including ACM Transactions on Modelling and Simulation (TOMACS) where he was a founding area editor of modelling methodology in 1990. He is CEO of Metaphorz, LLC which assists the State of Florida in its catastrophe modelling software engineering auditing process for risk-based simulation for hurricanes and floods.
Lunch will be provided for registered attendees from 12.15 hrs in the WBS Staff Lounge