Current Program News

New Course Offering: Modeling and Simulation for International Studies
Modeling and Simulation for International Studies is a new topics course for both M&S and IS students. The course introduces modeling and simulation as a tool for expanding one's understanding of events that have shaped the global environment of the 21st century. The course will first provide a broad look at international politics through a review of select international incidents, military interventions, and homeland security issues. Modeling paradigms such as agent-based models and system dynamics will be utilized to explore these case studies.

ODU's Modeling and Simulation Graduate Program (MSIM) is an inter-disciplinary program offering the MS, ME and PhD degrees. The Graduate Program is supported by research scientists and facilities of the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC), Old Dominion University's internationally recognized research center focused on modeling, simulation and visualization.

Modeling and Simulation is playing an increasing role at the cutting edge of international studies and students interested and capable of pursuing high-end modeling are in very high demand across the social sciences. To make this course significant to both social science and engineering students, attention will be paid to:

• understanding selected case studies with an eye to gathering empirical data to create a an abstract representation of the event
• understanding what model would best represent the data
• understanding how to construct a model
• understanding how to analyze, verify, and validate the model developed

Contact Dr. Banks, cmbanks@odu.edu or Dr. Sokolowski, jsokolow@odu.edu for more information.