Relational information modeling foundations of systems
Date and time: 5 December 2024, 13:00-14:00 CET
Speaker: Eswaran Subrahmanian, Carnegie Mellon University
Title: Relational information modeling foundations of systems
Where: ONLINE only
Zoom: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/69560887455
Host: Sebastiaan Meijer, smeijer@kth.se
Administrator: Mario Romero, marior@kth.se
Abstract: The primary hypothesis of this talk is that information structures play an important part in representing the world to make sense. They represent pieces of cognitive structures that we use every day in collaborative work settings. Today we use databases, excel sheets, power points, text, and other media. There have been several attempts at an integrative system. Still, almost all of them have suffered from interface and interoperability issues leading to hand-crafting the interfaces between the different pieces. Mostly, they are document-centric systems with API-based interfaces between related systems.
The fundamental problem is that system breakdown happens at the interfaces just as concurrent engineering happens at the interfaces. Failures are linguistic and conceptual gaps in understanding. They happen at the interfaces where the relational structures are often fragile. Fragmentation and plurality in the engineering information of large projects are at the core of failures and delays. People try to overcome these issues through human knowledge of the people involved as they often carry the relational information in their heads and have case histories.
Traditionally used information structures and, more importantly, the relations between the structures can be supported through abstract mathematics, especially Category Theory. It can serve as the conceptual and mathematical foundation for the informational representation of structures (algebras), and their composition through relationship maps. In this talk, we will illustrate through examples that Category theory provides us with the theoretical foundations for systems modeling
Bio: He was the Chief Scientist at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (India, 2008- 2011). He has held visiting professorships at the Faculty of Technology and Policy Management at TU-Delft, Netherlands, the University of Lyon II, France, and the IIT Bangalore, India. He is the Co-Chair of the Design Theory SIG of the Design Society. His research is in the areas of Socio-technical systems design, Decision support systems, Engineering informatics, Design theory and methods, and engineering design education. As leader of the N-dim group at CMU, he has worked on designing design processes and collaborative work support systems for Westinghouse, ABB, Alcoa, Bombardier, Boeing, and Bosch. He co-founded a Bangalore-based non-profit simulation and gaming startup called Fields of View, India.
He was also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Royal Academy of engineering, UK, 2016. He was awarded the Steven Fenves Award for Systems Engineering at CMU. He is a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM, a Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Science, and a visiting fellow of the Scottish Computer Society in 2013. He is on the Advisory Board of Topos Institute, an applied Category theory Institute in the USA.