Brian Lawler
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
Contact Information
- e-mail: blawler@mitre.org (work), blawler@jhu.edu (school) or brian@brianlawler.org (home).
- Personal website is at brianlawler.org. My blog at Johns Hopkins is at blogs.jhu.edu/blawler.
- My personal info page at MITRE is www.mitre.org/staffpages/blawler/
- My profile on LinkedIn is at www.linkedin.com/in/brianlawler
- My homepage on Facebook is www.facebook.com/blawler
SFI/CSSS '07 Program Info.
- CSSS 2007 Santa Fe-Schedule
- CSSS 2007 Santa Fe-Readings
- CSSS 2007 Santa Fe-Tutorials
- CSSS 2007 Santa Fe-Projects & Working Groups
My Background
- Masters, Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2002
- Bachelors, Political Science, University of Colorado, 1984
- Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM), MITRE, 2003-present
- CEM is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). Most of my work is devoted to enterprise modernization efforts in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
- Fidelity Investments, 1991-1996
- This was in the privately funded venture capital business
- United States Marine Corps, 1984-1988
- Primarily operating in the 1st Marine Division
My CSSS-'07 Interests and Goals
- Interested in the courses on non-linear dynamics, modeling (including agent-based), computational complexity, finance, economics, pattern recognition, and markets
- Really interested in SFI's work on complexity economics.
- Interesting in hearing about lots of interesting ideas and meet lots of interesting people
- Would like to cquire some new ways of thinking about problems (esp. related to my work)
- Hope to learn more about complexity theory, complexity science, complexity economics, etc.
Candidate Project/Paper Ideas
- I work with very large, very complex, systems that include technical and non-technical participants. They span organizations, borders and time. Established engineering and management practices don't actually seem to guide them all that well and it is in our social interest that they function properly. I'm interested to learn, think and write about ideas that help us thrive amidst this chaos.
Potentially Useful Skills
- Very strong, expert-level, at UML and using the dominant UML tools (e.g. Rational Rose(tm)) for modeling technical and non-technical systems.
- Basic skills at using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) including using ExpertChoice.
- Current reading material includes Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach but mostly for the chapters on constraints.
- Fairly good technical and business audience writer.
- Decent programmer in C++, Java, XML, etc. and using a variety of info-worker tools (Project, Excel, MindMap, etc.)
Documents
- Presentation on Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA), NIST, February 2005 (pdf)
- UML References, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Tools, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Diagram Overview, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Notation Overview, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Example (Point-of-Sale System), SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Notations for Large-Scale Systems, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Notations for System Boundaries, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML Notations for Variations, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- UML to Code Presentation, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- Object conversions in complex type hierarchies, SFI CSSS-'07, June 2007 (ppt)
- Techniques for Analysis of Alternatives, December 2009 (pdf)
- Book review of "Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective" by Oded Goldreich., Assoc. of Computing Machinery, January 2010 (pdf)
Hobbies
- Video games. Most genres. Pretty much anything that comes with a toolkit so I can create my own stuff - e.g. Unreal engine.
- Puzzles. Mostly things that are metaphors for my work. I spend more time than I ought to on Sudoku and Bejeweled.