Andy Kinder
Andy is a PhD candidate within the Engineering Systems of Systems (ESoS) research group at Loughborough University. His research is concerned with the dynamic modelling of Systems of Systems and is sponsored by Lockheed Martin UK IS&GS (Information Systems and Global Services Security). The research is being performed concurrently with his role as a Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin where he has been involved with several SoS related research projects and is also technical lead for UK support of Tactical Data Link (TDL) Standards. Areas of industry research at LM UK have included; Data Looping within multi-TDL architectures, error growth within SoS, NEC Interoperability study and Human to Human Interoperability assessment and improvement.
Prior to joining LM UK four years ago Andy was a consultant engineer performing contract work for Boeing involving the implementation of TDL processing within the Nimrod MRA4 aircraft mission system. He began his career at BAe Systems, performing Systems and Software Engineering roles on various projects such as Tornado training systems and TDL platform integration and simulation.
Whilst employed at BAE Systems he obtained a BSc (Hons) 1st Class from the Open University, specialising in Computing and Mathematics.
Education
- PhD Systems Engineering
Loughborough University, July 2011 - present
- BSc (Hons) 1st Class, Computing and Mathematics
Open University, 1995 – 2000
- B/TEC Higher National Diploma, Electronic/Electrical Engineering
Norwich City College, 1984 -1987
Employment
- Lockheed Martin UK IS&GS
Systems Engineer, Staff, January 2008 to present
- Aerosystems International
Lead Data Link Software Engineer (Freelance), July 2007 to December 2007
- Boeing Operations International Inc
Lead Data Link Software Engineer (Freelance), April 1998 to July 2007
- GEC Marconi Avionics
Software Engineer (Freelance), January 1998 to April 1998
- BAE Systems
Software/Systems Engineer, June 1988 to January 1998
Industry Based Research
- Data Looping in multi-TDL environments, July 2007 to October 2008
- Spatial and Temporal Error Propagation within an SoS, September 2009 to March 2010
- NEC Interoperability study, September 2010 to March 2011
- Human to Human Interoperability assessment and improvement techniques, March 2011 to September 2011
Andy began his research in July 2011 and is sponsored by Lockheed Martin UK IS&GS (Information Systems and Global Services Security). The purpose of the research is to determine a method, or methods, of dynamically modelling Systems of Systems. It is envisaged that the dynamic modelling of SoS will provide a powerful risk reduction capability by enabling emergent behaviour to be predicted.
The aim is to develop general approaches that may be applied to different types of SoS. Initial research will establish relationships between current modelling techniques and both classifications and characteristics of SoS. These relationships will be captured within a framework which will provide a cross reference allowing suitable techniques to be identified where modelling of a SoS is required. In addition the framework will enable a gap analysis of SoS modelling to be performed, the results of which will drive the next phase of the research.