Dr. Stuart Umpleby is a professor emeritus in the Department of Management and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business at The George Washington University. He received degrees in engineering, political science, and communications from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. From 1975 to the present he has been a professor at The George Washington University. From 1994 to 1997 he was the faculty facilitator of the Quality and Innovation Initiative in the GW School of Business and Public Management. From 1997 to 2000 he worked on the Year 2000 Computer Crisis, viewing it as an opportunity to test social science theories using a before and after research design. He teaches courses in the philosophy of science, cross-cultural management, organizational behavior, cybernetics, and systems science. Other interests include process improvement methods, group facilitation methods, and the use of computer networks.
Umpleby has published articles in Science, Policy Sciences, Population and Environment, Science Communication, The Futurist, Futures, World Futures, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Simulation and Games, Business and Society Review, Journal of International Business and Economics, Review of Business Research, Telecommunications Policy, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Reflexive Control, Systems Practice, Kybernetes, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Cybernetics and Systems and several foreign language journals. He is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics. He is Associate Editor of the journal Cybernetics and Systems.
Umpleby has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Central Asia Research Initiative. He has consulted with the World Bank, with government agencies in the U.S. and Canada and with corporations in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China. He has advised on the creation of a PhD program in management and business in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In May 2008 he conducted a video conference on "How to do Research" with Uzbek scholars at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent.
In connection with his work in systems theory and management, he has been a guest scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, the University of Vienna, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, and the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is a member of the Principia Cybernetica Project at the Free University of Brussels. In spring 2004 he was a Fulbright Scholar in the School of Economics and Business, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Between 1981 and 1988 Umpleby was the American coordinator of a series of meetings between American and Russian scientists to discuss the foundations of cybernetics and systems theory. These meetings were supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Research and Exchanges Board of the American Council of Learned Societies. His interest in the transitions in the post-communist countries has resulted in his presenting lectures at various institutes of the Academies of Science of Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria.He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Cybernetics, the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and the International Society for the Systems Sciences.
Dr. Leonid Perlovsky is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University and CEO LP Information Technology. In the past, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Medical School Athinoula Martinos Brain Imaging Center, Technical Advisor and Principal Research Scientist at the AF Research Lab. He created a new area of cognitive mathematical engineering, dynamic logic, which solved a number of problems unsolvable for decades. He leads research projects on mathematical models of the mind mechanisms including higher cognitive functions, language, emotions of the beautiful, music, cognitive algorithms for various applications. In leading brain imaging labs around the world his models have been proven experimentally to explain the mind mechanisms not understood previously. As Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $500mm high-tech DOD contractor, he led the corporate research in intelligent systems. He served as professor at Novosibirsk University and New York University; as a principal in commercial startups developing tools for biotechnology, text understanding, and financial predictions. He is invited as a keynote plenary speaker and tutorial lecturer worldwide, including most prestigious venues such as the Nobel Forum at Karolinska Institutet Stockholm; published more than 500 papers, 17 book chapters, and 5 books including “Neural Networks and Intellect,” Oxford University Press, 2001 (currently in the 3rd printing) and “Emotional, Cognitive, Neural Algorithms with Engineering Applications,” Springer 2011; awarded 2 patents. Dr. Perlovsky participates in organizing conferences on Computational Intelligence, Chair for the IEEE Task Force on The Mind and Brain, on the International Neural Network Society (INNS) Board of Governors, past Chair for the IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter, Chair of The INNS Award Committee. He has founded and serves as Editor-in-Chief for “Physics of Life Reviews,” the IF=9.5, ranked #4 in the world by Thomson Reuters. He received National and International awards including The Best Paper Award at Russian most prestigious magazine, Zvezda; the Gabor Award, the top engineering award from the INNS; and the John McLucas Award, the highest US Air Force Award for basic research.
Dr. Nagib Callaos is the founding president of the IIIS and the founding president of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI). He is former Dean of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar and was the founding presidents of several organization on research, development, and technological innovation, e.g. The Foundation of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar, the founding president of the Venezuelan Fund for Technological Innovations (created by presidential decree), The founding president of the Venezuelan Association of Executives in Patents and Copyrights, etc. His main research and professional activities were in the area of systemic Methodologies of Information System Development, Group Decision Support Systems, and Action-Research mainly via Operations Research. He tutored more than 100 undergraduate and graduate theses and produced more than 100 research papers and reflection articles.
Related to the topic of this conversational session he has been continuously designing and redesigning (for about 35 years) more effective methodologies for information/informing system development, which effectiveness depends on including ethos, pathos, and logos to the in the context of a combination of systemic and traditional systematic analysis, design, and development methodologies. A synthesis of was he has achieved in this methodological area can be found at http://www.iiis.org/nagib-callaos/Toward-Systemic-Notion-of-Methodology-Practical-Consequences.pdf. With regards to the cybernetic relationships implicitly or explicitly should exist between episteme and techne, science and engineering, in the context of their industrial and societal insertion can be found at http://www.iiis.org/nagib-callaos/engineering-and-meta-engineering/engineering-and-metaengineering.pdf. This kind of insertion is necessary for the Ethos, Pathos and Logos of both episteme and techne as well as of both Science and Engineering/technology. This has strong consequences in the Ethos, Pathos and Logos, especially in Higher education.
The objective of this conversational session is oriented to elicit information and practice-based opinions and reflections as input for future more detailed and more formalized articles. These new versions might be worked out by interested individuals or groups via collaborative processes.
Parts of the potentially generated articles might also produce spin off of individual or collaborative (informal or more formal) articles. Another objective of this session is to explore the desirability and feasibility of founding and organizing an International Association for an Integral, Integrated, and Integrative Academy (IIIA)
