Director
Professor Nancy Leveson
Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Prof. Leveson conducts research on the topics of system safety, software safety, software and system engineering, and human-computer interaction. In 1999, she received the ACM Allen Newell Award for outstanding computer science research and in 1995 the AIAA Information Systems Award for “developing the field of software safety and for promoting responsible software and system engineering practices where life and property are at stake.” In 2005 she received the ACM Sigsoft Outstanding Research Award. She has published over 200 research papers and is author of two books, “Safeware: System Safety and Computers” published in 1995 by Addison-Wesley and “Engineering a Safer World” published in 2012 by MIT Press. She consults extensively in many industries on the ways to prevent accidents.
Dr. John P. Thomas
Dr. Thomas has a background in CS, EE, Computer Engineering, and Systems Engineering and spent a number of years in industry working for aerospace, automotive, and defense companies. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems and he now works as a member of the aeronautics and astronautics department at MIT. His research is focused on developing STAMP-based methods. His work includes creating structured processes for analyzing complex automated and human-intensive systems, especially systems that may behave in unanticipated, unsafe, or otherwise undesirable ways through complex interactions with each other and their environment. By using control theory and systems theory, more efficient and effective design and analysis processes can be created to prevent flaws that lead to unsafe or unexpected behaviors when integrated with other systems. More recently he has been applying these techniques to automated systems that are heavily dependent on human interactions and may not only experience human error but may inadvertently induce human error through mode confusion, clumsy automation, and other mechanisms that can be difficult to anticipate.
Dr. Thomas’s work also includes defining a formal structure underlying a systems-theoretic process that can be used to help ensure potentially hazardous or undesirable behaviors are systematically identified. He has developed algorithms to automatically generate formal executable and model-based requirements for software components as well as methods to detect flaws in a set of existing requirements. The same process can be applied to both safety and functional goals of the system, thereby permitting the automated detection of conflicts between safety and other requirements during early system development.
Dr. Thomas has taught classes on software engineering, cybersecurity, system safety, system engineering, human-centered design, and related topics.
E-mail: jthomas4@mit.edu
Students
Polly Harrington
Polly Harrington is a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Engineering Systems Laboratory. She graduated from Tufts with a B.S. in Engineering Psychology in 2021. Her research interest is in using human factors techniques to enhance safety analysis on complex sociotechnical systems.
Eugenia Kim
Eugenia Kim is an Engineering and Management master’s degree candidate at MIT as a fellow in the System Design and Management program. Her current research focuses on applications of system-theoretic process analysis to health information systems. In her professional work, Eugenia has served in business operations, product management, and systems analysis roles within developer relations, emerging tech incubation, and health informatics organizations. She holds an M.S. degree in Health Informatics from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences and a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.
Braden Bower
Braden is an Engineering and Management, and Mechanical Engineering dual master’s degree candidate at MIT as a fellow in the System Design and Management program and a student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. His current research focuses on applications of Causal Analysis based on Systems Theory to organizational structures, particularly Naval Shipyards, and how to use lessons learned through System Theoretic Process Analysis to design a safer system. In his professional work, Braden has excelled in nuclear reactor plant operation, nuclear engineering, systems engineering, and project management roles within the United States Navy. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Texas A&M University: Corpus Christi.
Marianne Vanhala
Marianne Vanhala is visiting the Engineering Systems Laboratory at MIT and is working on her master’s thesis with the additional guidance of prof. Nancy Leveson. She is a graduate student in Machine Design at the University of Oulu in Finland where she also earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2023. In her research she is focused on enhancing safety and better usage of automation in human-machine systems, particularly from the early design process.
Rodrigo Rose
Rodrigo Lopes Rose earned his master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Engineering Systems Laboratory at MIT in 2024. His master’s research involved the study of the standards used to assess the safety of and certify commercial aircraft, to understand how those methods may be improved by learning from recent accidents. He also conducted research on other applications of systems theory for the improvement of safety in aviation and healthcare. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022, with a focus on applications of machine learning to improve commercial aviation safety. He now works as a system safety engineer at BETA Technologies, an aerospace company developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.