ACADEMIA

The National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA) is supporting America's first nationwide meeting of the modeling and simulation industry that will take place in Washington, DC on Monday, February 6 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel.

America's first nationwide meeting of the modeling and simulation industry will take place in Washington, DC on Monday, February 6. Encompassing the entire industry--from major corporations to small businesses and research institutions-- the event will be attended by the entire spectrum of players in the world of modeling, simulation and virtual reality. The Congress, organized in response to the explosive growth the industry has witnessed in the past decade, will focus on establishing, for the first time, a national agenda for maintaining the growth of modeling and simulation technology and its incorporation into all areas of the national economy, welfare, and security.

The Congress, to be held on Monday, February 6 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC, will be attended by about 500 senior representatives from industry, government, research and academic institutions, and other organizations and individuals who play a key role in the technology.    The one-day event will feature a panel of high level representatives from several practice areas, and will then proceed to an organizational phase, during which committees will outline a detailed nationwide action plan in four areas: Education and Workforce Development; Technology Research and Development; Industrial Development; and Business Practice. the plan will then be implemented by the National Modeling and Simulation Coalition (NMSC), which will be mandated by the Congress.

Attending the February 6 event will be members of the Congressional Modeling and Simulation Caucus; representatives from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and high level corporate executives. 
For a more complete agenda and a complete speaker list, please visithttp://www.trainingsystems.org/events/index.cfm.

Media representatives are invited to attend all or part of the Congress free of charge. Please register at the above URL prior to February 5.

Modeling and simulation has suffused itself into virtually every aspect of human learning, economic activity and predictive analysis. In fact, there is today no component of our national infrastructure, be it healthcare, homeland security and disaster preparedness, transportation, national defense, design, construction, maintenance and predictive analysis, in which modeling and simulation does not play an important and often indispensable role. The rapidity of modeling and simulation's expansion into applications which were not anticipated even an few short years ago means that the growth has been uneven, with some areas now quickly maturing while others have yet to incorporate the enormous advantages modeling and simulation offers over numerous traditional methodologies. A basic goal of the Coalition will be to ensure that the labor, cost and material savings of modeling and simulation, not to mention the far more dynamic and interactive environments it employs, are fully appreciated by all sectors of the national economy, thus paving the way for even more complete utilization of the technology. Further, by uniting all institutions, organizations and individuals involved in modeling and simulation, the Coalition will aim to achieve organizational economies of scale by addressing bottlenecks through a comprehensive flow of industry-wide information while at the same time identifying and ameliorating duplication of effort.

The Modeling and Simulation Congress represents a ground-breaking event, not only for a vital part of America's industrial base, but for the national economy as well.