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GMU C4I Center Seminar

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Tomorrow's Advanced C2 Research
and
Brains Stuck on Pleistocene

Dr. Dennis K. McBride

Friday, April 27, 2012 at 1:30 PM

Nguyen Engineering building, Room 4705

ABSTRACT

There are at least four major challenges as national investments in C2 research go forward. Two are organic to law and policy; two are deeply technological. This talk will suggest that all four may be solved or at least altered via technological innovation. Common to each challenge is ensuring resilience of C2 in highly contested C4ISR environments: Resilience implies C2 of C2. Such C2 deep reflection necessitates vast improvements in (1) management of depth ("what if" planning) and (2) management of breadth (exploitation of social media). The discussion will focus on these concerns in the context of how human brains seem to deal with problems that are already deep and broad.

BIO

DENNIS K. McBRIDE very recently joined the faculty and administration at GMU. He will split his time between serving as Associate Director of the C4I Center (along with Dr. Kathy Laskey) and as interim GMU Associate VP for Research. He retired in 1999 as a Naval Aerospace Experimental Psychologist, having served in five customer-focused laboratories and three R&D headquarters organizations, including DARPA ONR. Since that time, McBride has served as Professor and Director of the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, President of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and recently as a return program manager in C2 advanced research at DARPA. His science and technology leadership has focused on C2 / modeling and simulation, and its necessary connectivity to human nervous systems. He earned the Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Georgia, and post doctoral master's degrees in systems, and in public administration. McBride is affiliated professor the Georgetown University Medical Center and at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Having published extensively, his co-edited book, Quantifying Human Information Processing (Rowman and Littlefield) deals with many of the challenges of human decision-making in C2 contexts.