Dr. Margaret Loper is the Chief Scientist for the Information & Communications Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, an Associate Director for the Georgia Tech Institute for Information Security and Privacy, and the Chief Technology Officer for the Georgia Tech Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies (CDAIT). She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University.
Margaret has worked in Modeling and Simulation for more than 30 years, specifically focused on parallel and distributed systems. She is a founding member of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) and received service awards for her work with the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and High-Level Architecture (HLA) standards and the DIS/SISO transition. Her research contributions are in the areas of temporal synchronization, simulation testing, and simulation communication protocols.
Margaret has taught simulation courses for both academic and professional education for more than 10 years. She is a founding member of Georgia Tech’s Professional Masters in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) degree program, where she teaches the core M&S course. Margaret started the M&S professional education certificate through the GT School of Professional Education and has taught hundreds of students since it started in 2007. In 2015, she published a book on modeling and simulation in the systems engineering life cycle.
Since 2010, Margaret has been focused on technology strategy, starting strategic initiatives on Big Data & Analytics, Internet of Things, and Smart Cities. Her current research is focused on gray zone warfare in urban environments, computational trust algorithms for machine-to-machine systems, and situational awareness in smart cities and megacities.