A new graduate program in networked information systems engineering: underlying thinkings

Summary form only given. There is a strong feeling among many educators and particularly within the government, military, and industry that, to address the networked information technology systems of the future, the computer engineering (CpE) and computer engineering and science (CE&S) training should be augmented with the fundamental principles of: (a) integrated hardware-software systems, (b) computer architecture, (c) networking, (d) network security, (e) modeling and simulation, (f) computational intelligence, (g) asynchronous distributed algorithms, and (h) creative design. The enhanced CpE or CE&S program will take on a new existence-networked information systems engineering (NISE), in its own right. Given that the combined knowledge of the sub-fields (a) through (h) is likely to be overwhelming for any time-bound graduate program, a practical NISE curriculum must consist of an integrated distillate of all the sub-fields. In addition, the NISE program must include elements of physical and mathematical intuition and key principles from mechanics, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics, all of which are critically necessary to foster technical leadership among the future NISE engineers and are visibly lacking in many of today's CpE or CE&S graduates.